Britain is sleepwalking into a new recession

The sleepers think that the economy has never been better. Jobs are up. Unemployment is down. Things are good. Most people, including you, are asleep.

And then there are the people who are awake. We call these people economists. They spend their time looking into the future, and mostly they see an economic slump coming. They are alarmed by it. That's why the ECB reduced interest rates to zero last week.

But weirdly, it feels like we've never had it so good. Here is our current situation according to a great set of charts from Barclays:

Barclays

Technically, we're at full employment. Self-employment rates are high. The current employment rate is the highest since records began in the mid 1970s.

But economists don't care much about the present. They want to know what's going to happen next. And what they're seeing is scary. The economy is slowing down, and many of the key indicators are in decline.

We're sleepwalking into the next recession.

Scroll on for a scary look at the future ...