UK Wage Growth Overtakes Inflation

Growth in average pay for UK workers overtook inflation for the first time in five years, according to data from the Office for National Statistics.

Wages excluding bonuses rose by 1.3% in the year to September, beating the 1.2% Consumer Prices Index inflation rate.

Including bonuses, earnings rose by 1%, the ONS said.

The ONS also said that UK unemployment fell by 115,000 between July and September to 1.96 million, the 18th consecutive fall.

Pay has lagged inflation since the global financial crisis, but in recent months earnings have been rising just as the pace of price growth slows.

The government said it showed that the recovery was feeding through to household budgets, but unions said it would be years before earnings returned to pre-crisis levels.

IHS Global Insight’s chief UK economist, Howard Archer, said the news on pay would be a relief for consumers.

But he added: “This is still really more to do with low inflation than markedly improving earnings. However, earnings growth did take a much-needed decent step in the right direction in September.”

via BBC

Content is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.

Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza