As others have pointed out, we're off the back of COVID and money is tight. Most companies are looking to shrink team sizes, hence the lack of hiring. AI tools have almost zero relevance, and the rest of the article does not substantiate the claim at all.
> Despite this, year-on-year growth remained positive at +0.49%, marking the third consecutive month of annual improvement and suggesting a slow but steady recovery from the recent market slump.
There are things that can be done to screw with numbers, but it only works for a short time. The UK for example only counts unemployment as those actively looking for work, but it is well known that there is a growing number of permanently unemployed which is hidden. The number of people applying for PIP (a type of disability allowance typically awarded to those unable to work) is growing by 1k a day [0]. In perspective, the population of the UK grows by ~1.6k a day and is projected to fall.
The growth figure is likely based on the ONS [1], which are constantly having to revise their figures for data that was already available at the time of publication [2] - they do this a lot. One hack by this government is when they grew the public sector at the cost of the private sector, which is unsustainable. A company I know halved their employees but still pay the same amount of national insurance, so the economic value per employee is reduced due to increased overheads.
This is not unique to the UK, though. I speak to many Europeans that go through a similar situation, and I hear of similar stories throughout the West. The EU for example has a growing issue with ECB bond management where it plays games to to try to bring down borrowing costs. The Japanese market, a large purchaser of foreign debt, is starting to get concerned [2], and signals a potential crisis for the US to be able to borrow at low rates. From all accounts China is just about keeping their head above the water and are pulling a lot of tricks.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/24/pat-mcfadde...
[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/bulle...
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/business-68680004
[3] https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/japan-consider-buying-b...