Employment minister Chris Grayling might be going on holiday pretty chuffed with himself after the latest employment figures. On the other hand, a lot of other ministers have much to think about as they prepare to sun themselves.

How do we reconcile booming private sector employment with a flat economy? The obvious answer is that productivity is falling. The fact that real wages are falling suggests that this may be true. But why? There are several possible explanations, none of which are mutually exclusive.

1.    Policy uncertainty in the eurozone – and to some extent in the UK – is leading companies to sit on piles of cash instead of investing.

2.    Fewer companies at the margins of profitability are going bust because interest rates are very low and because of forbearance.

3.    The government is spending ten percentage points more of national income than ten years ago. All the evidence suggests that this will lower the growth rate by about one percentage point.

4.    A recent article in the Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin suggested that it was the energy and financial sectors that have particularly sluggish productivity. One reason is declining output in the North Sea. The other reasons are entirely policy induced. It would be difficult to imagine how the government could design a “green” policy that involved reducing carbon emissions at greater cost than the current policy. If I were a “green” economist, I would be livid. The government has designed policy that leads either to less CO2 reduction for a given cost or a higher cost of a given CO2 reduction. All those solar panels really do have very little – or negative – value. In financial services, the government has chosen to impose higher capital and liquidity requirements on banks to try to reduce the risk of financial crises. This lowers the productivity of the financial sector – there will be fewer loans to businesses and individuals for a given capital base. This is a policy choice and the government could choose differently. Its policy is not irrational, but it should understand the consequences.

5.    Our appalling tax and welfare system, puts in place huge marginal rates of tax and benefit withdrawal, especially for full-time workers with families. Why train, or search for another job with higher pay if an adequate one can be found quickly? Government policy has made search, promotion, training etc a waste of time.

6.    The same system has probably encouraged people to take pay cuts and thus encouraged labour hoarding in the recession. If somebody gets a £1 pay cut, most of this will be returned to the person taking the pay cut through increased benefits and reduced taxes.

This article originally appeared on the New Statesman blog. Read the rest here.