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Britain lost two places in the eighth rank of an influential global competitiveness index, the risk that Brexit will further damage its international reputation.
The World Economic Forum (WEF), which hosts the annual gathering of business leaders and political leaders in Davos, said the UK was overtaken by Hong Kong and Japan because of its annual ranking of 140 economies the most competitive in the world.
The ranking, dominated by the United States for the first time in ten years, revealed that Europe as a whole was now less competitive than the regions of East Asia and the Pacific . He also warned that the majority of the world's economies were ill-prepared for rapid advances in technology.
The WEF has evaluated the world's largest economies through nearly 100 different indicators, from the quality of infrastructure to life expectancy and the labor market.
The Geneva-based organization has also added several new measures to its 2018 study, such as the diversity of the workforce, the freedom of the press and the degree of hierarchy of the largest companies in a given economy.
While Britain remains the fourth most competitive economy in Europe behind Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has hinted that it would risk to back down, as Brexit risked undermining its appeal to international buyers and sellers of goods and services.
"Brexit … will, by definition, weaken the UK market component as a result of reduced EU integration," the report says.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) said Britain had lost its place in the 2018 rankings due to a deterioration in the mobility of the national workforce, which measures the degree of mobility of people between different regions of a country to find work.
Basing its judgment on a survey of business executives, the United Kingdom rose from 17th worldwide for internal mobility of the workforce to 48th in 2018.
British workers finally began to see their wages rise at the fastest pace in almost a decade, while unemployment dropped to its lowest level since the mid-1970s.
However, younger people have changed jobs less often than in the past, while economists believe that the higher wage pull factor in regions such as London and the Southeast are likely to be more prevalent. is blurred, believing that the rapid growth of housing costs had weighed on incomes.
Stephen Clarke, Senior Economic Analyst at the Resolution Foundation, said, "We have seen a sharp decline in movements from one job to another during the crisis and, although it has since risen, it remains about 20% below the level before the crisis. crisis.
"With the economic recovery, people are becoming a bit more adventurous and changing jobs, but not at the levels we've seen."
According to the WEF report, Britain currently seems less prepared than some of its economic rivals to take advantage of rapid technological change, due to the low adoption rate of IT equipment, the relatively poor provision of mobile broadband and fiber, and relatively poor digital skills of businesses. population.
He praised the country for having "high performing markets" for the purchase and sale of goods and services, which rank fourth in the world, for a level of innovation in businesses and a dynamic financial markets.
