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Macrodoze.

Macrodoze.

Hello and welcome to MacroDose, a podcast hosted by me, James Meadway, that brings you your weekly fix of everything economics and a quick 15-minute roundup.

Each Wednesday morning, we bring you the key stories making the news and the analysis you need to make sense of them.

On today's episode, we'll be taking a look at first.

The huge rise in economic inactivity after the pandemic is provoking concern.

But should it?

Second, as the government sue's scandal-ridden PPE MedPro for failing to meet a contract during the pandemic,

we'll have a look at how government managed to waste so much money so quickly.

And finally, the Bank of Japan has just startled financial markets across the world,

with a seemingly tiny tweak to how it tries to manage interest rates.

I'll try and sort out what this means for the rest of us.

First story this week is having a look at a report from the House of Law's Economic Affairs Committee, this fairly eminent backbench committee of peers with economic expertise, looking at the pressing question, they think, of economic inactivity.

Now, economic inactivity is not like unemployment.

Unemployment is if I don't have a job, but I want a job, I'm going to register as unemployed.

Economic inactivity is when I don't have a job and I don't want a job.

I'm just simply not going to bother.

Looking for one, I'm not interested in any of these things.

And what's happened since the pandemic is a big increase in

Britain, bigger than lots of other countries, in economic inactivity. Obviously, during the

pandemic itself, you can understand that lots of people aren't going to be going out to work

...