Three minutes after ten is the time, and you are listening to James O'Brien on LBC.

A few things on the agenda this morning.

Many civil servants will work from home for good, says their boss.

I do wonder, this is the chief operating officer of the civil service and permanent secretary of the cabinet office,

saying that the new foundability of his workforce to vary their working patterns was a huge positive.

He comes and goes that one, doesn't it?

For a while we thought that we're never going to go back to normal at all.

And then we thought that we were going to return surprisingly quickly to complete previous levels of workplace attendance. And now, perhaps as the dust

begins to settle, we can together get a clearer picture of what the future is likely to look like.

It pains me to say it, so I won't, I won't explain why somehow this country has contrived

to make itself a place where falling unemployment is bad news.

Can you work out why?

You probably joined the dots listening to the news bulletin a minute ago.

But rising levels, at all predictions of what the post-pandemic labour force would look like have proved to be unduly pessimistic. I know it may change again

when furlough comes to an end at the end of this month, but looking forward, it is fair to say

today that the predictions of where unemployment would be. Some experts suggested over 10%

when we came out of the pandemic have been frustrated, but it is actually bad news in the bigger

picture for the country, which may lead us back to the calls for British employers to simply

pay more money and in the reports, reported words of some government ministers to stop whining

about the shortage of workers, of workers, of labour.

97% of parents say child care is too dear. You know by now how my mind works. I want to find

the 3%. I want to find the 3% of parents that go, no, that's absolutely, absolutely reasonable.

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