Britain’s top financial official started the year with a plea. To those who retired early in the pandemic or have not found the right job after furlough, Jeremy Hunt said, “Britain needs you.”Many analysts have concluded the British economy is stumbling partly because it doesn’t have enough workers. The Bank of England has slashed its expectations about Britain’s economic potential, suspecting that there is little prospect for growth in the labor supply. Without additional workers, productivity and economic activity will falter.Employment dropped around the world during the worst of the pandemic, but unlike elsewhere, in Britain it hasn’t rebounded. The number of working age people counted as “economically inactive” is still about 490,000 higher than in February 2020, according to data from the Office for National Statistics published Tuesday. Nearly two-thirds of them are over 50.This i …
