The national chronic productivity problem has been blamed on poor investment, zombie companies and bad management, but economists have now added another possible reason to the list: trendy millennials who put lifestyle before hard work.

 

Douglas McWilliams, deputy chairman of the Centre for Economics and Business Research, who documented the ascendance of creative Britain in his book The Flat White Economy, estimates that the rise of the “lifestyle economy” since 2008 may have cost the UK as much as £80 billion in lost GDP.

 

View the Times article here and download the full report here.