Barclays makes prediction on house prices and unemployment

The chief executive of the Barclays Group, John Varley, has recently spoken out about his predictions for both house price movement and unemployment in the UK over the course of this year.

There have been a number of predictions made by a variety of industry groups and professionals with regards to how quickly and by how much house prices will fall, as well as with regards to how fast and aggressively unemployment levels will rise.

Varley stated recently that over the course of this year he expected house prices to slide by around 10-15 percent, with Barclays having predicted a total slide of between 25-30 percent between 2007 and 2009.

He stated: “We’re probably about halfway through that period, so in other words we’ve got another 10-15 percent to fall between now and the end of next year.”

He also said that he expected unemployment levels to rise by over 7 percent over the course of this year.

With regards to unemployment levels he stated: “I think an additional 700,000 people unemployed over the course of the next 12 months is certainly possible to contemplate.”

He said that banks, central banks, and the government were partly to blame for the recession and the financial problems being experienced in the UK.

He also said that Barclays had refused a government bailout because it wanted to remain independent so that its growth overseas would not be marred, stating: “If British taxpayers’ money is going to be deployed in a bank as a result of the government owning shares in that bank, then a big part of the agenda of that bank and a lot of that incremental capital has to be directed at the UK. Our UK business is extremely important to us, but we employ more people outside the UK than inside the UK, we have more customers outside the UK than inside the UK, and it’s very important to me that that agenda of growth outside the UK is unimpaired.”

Tags: Barclays Group, barclays house prices, group, Business Finance, house, Central bank, unemployment