Britain’s jobs market has lost more steam, according to official data, with employment falling for a seventh month in row and wage growth slowing, potentially easing worries at the Bank of England about persistent inflation pressures.<\/p>\n
The number of employees on company payrolls, as measured by tax office data, fell by a provisional 8,000 in August from July, extending a run of declines that began in February.<\/p>\n
July’s drop in payrolls was revised to 6,000 from an previously reported reduction of 8,000.<\/p>\n
Employers have blamed finance minister Rachel Reeves’ tax increase on them for their cautious stance on staffing.<\/p>\n
Basic wage growth in the private sector – which is watched closely by the Bank of England – slowed to 4.7% between May and July from 4.8% in the three months to June.<\/p>\n
Overall average weekly earnings, excluding bonuses, grew by 4.8%, weaker than the previous reading of 5.0% but still above the roughly 3% level seen as consistent with the Bank of England’s 2% inflation target.<\/p>\n
Economists polled by Reuters had mostly expected regular annual wage growth to slow to 4.8%.<\/p>\n
However, there were some signs of an improvement in employers’ appetite for hiring in the jobs market.<\/p>\n
The number of job vacancies in the three months to August rose to 728,000 having touched its lowest since early 2021 in the previous month’s release.<\/p>\n
The Bank of England last month lowered interest rates to 4% from 4.25% but the central bank is widely expected to keep them on hold this week as it remains wary about inflation heat in the economy, including the jobs market.<\/p>\n
Today’s data showed Britain’s unemployment rate in the three months to July held at 4.7%, its highest since the second quarter of 2021, although that figure is based on a survey of households that the ONS has said is not currently reliable.<\/p>\n
Surveys published last week showed that employers offered the lowest pay settlements in more than three-and-a-half years in July and hiring continued to slow – albeit by less than in previous months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain’s jobs market has lost more steam, according to official data, with employment falling for a seventh month…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[45,49,48,124],"class_list":{"0":"post-151183","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-jobs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}