EVEN if he had exercised due diligence, carefully sifting Britain’s economic data before accepting his job, Mark Carney would not have spotted the scale of the task awaiting him. The Bank of England’s new governor took the helm on July 1st. Just four days earlier Britain’s national statistics were revised to show an economy much further from its peak than previously thought. Worse, gathering hopes that a hesitant recovery will endure are pinned on a growth model that has been proven not to work.

Britain’s economic slump has been exceptional in two ways. First, the scale of the crash. The Office for National Statistics reckons the peak-to-trough fall in GDP was 7.2%, far bigger than in any other post-war recession. Second, the economy has bobbed up and down since then, going sideways while other big economies have returned to growth (see chart 1).

With so much lost ground to make up, Britain needs a sustained period of strong growth. That requires balance, something sorely lacking in the go-go years before the financial crisis. The public sector grew too quickly, funding purchases with government debt; private investment was more sluggish. Exports were meagre and trade deficits gaping. Shoppers’ behaviour was driven less by wage packets than by the availability of cheap credit.

The longed-for rebalancing away from such ephemeral sources of growth has not materialised. Investment is shockingly low. The biggest slice, investment by firms, is down by a colossal 34% since 2008 in real terms. Spending on machines is 33% lower, on vehicles 38% lower. Even spending on computers has fallen. The state has contributed to the imbalance. Public investment and house-building is down by 13.5% while government consumption is up 6% (see chart 2).

Ships still carry containers full of air away from Britain. Sterling has dropped by 25% in trade-weighted terms since 2007, making exports cheaper for foreigners to buy. Yet total exports are 1.5% lower and the trade deficit has hardly budged as a share of GDP. The combination of humdrum sales overseas and a slack home market helps explain why manufacturing output is down 11% in five years.

One thing that is rebalancing is banking. Banks’ former bias—towards credit funded by debt rather than by deposits and equity—has been hammered out of them by new regulations. Balance-sheets are being trimmed and equity buffers built up. But this comes at a cost. Lending to British firms, especially small ones, has collapsed, falling by 20% since 2009; the latest data show another drop. This is one reason why many small firms cannot invest.

The happiest news comes from services, which accounted for 79% of output in 2012. Services fell by less than other sectors in the recession and have recovered more strongly; they are now just 1% below the previous peak in real terms. Exports of services have risen in recent months; surveys of managers released on July 3rd suggest this could continue.

Yet even if services surge, it will be years before GDP returns to its old levels. This sits awkwardly with Britain’s employment figures. Since the trough at the end of 2009, private-sector employment is up by 1.6m and is now 500,000 above its 2008 peak. Since GDP is far lower, this means British workers have become much less productive.