Millennials who put lifestyle before hard work may be to blame for our national productivity problem, according to a London-based think tank

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.

“People are increasingly taking on jobs that offer less in remuneration than those that their predecessors might have accepted but that offer a more attractive lifestyle,” he said. “This change in job preferences, the lifestyle economy, has reduced growth since