Merryn Somerset Webb

Well, actually, for a couple of years, it's been weakening.

but what initially showed up as reduced vacancies has likely been showing up as increased unemployment.

But a report just yesterday suggesting unemployment might pick up to closer to 6% than to 5% later this year.

That might be overdone.

But nonetheless, fearfulness of unemployment is a good reason to hold off major purchases, houses, of course, the consummate major purchase.

So I'd be surprised if any time soon,

whether we see a turn in that market.

Nonetheless, if this wall were behind us, if there were a stronger expectation of rates being flat or perhaps even falling,

if people's inflation-adjusted pay keeps on rising, and let's bear in mind it has risen for the last two years, then maybe in the second half of the year, we could see a degree of perkiness.

But nonetheless, I'd be surprised if this is a year of which the housing market turns decisively.

Yeah, as was when I look at the affordability measures, one of the things that I think is that the people who would normally be buying houses now, maybe the first-time buyers, are also the ones who have the nine percentage points extra of effective income tax to pay in their student loans.

And that's a new dynamic in the housing market that might make it drag rather more than you might have expected previously looking at the affordability numbers.

Completely.

I mean, at a time when...

I mentioned the jobs market was soggy.

For young people, it's dripping wet, isn't it?

And that is true both of those, if you like, without a degree and usually for those with a degree as well.

Rates of graduate unemployment are sky high and that's uncomfortable against a backdrop of them carrying around

That leads us neatly, neatly, neatly onto AI.

And when I look at the unemployment numbers for the young today and how difficult it is for them to get jobs, and everyone says, oh, well, it's AI taking all the entry jobs, AI taking the graduate jobs, et cetera.