{"id":381946,"date":"2026-01-21T09:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T09:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/381946\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T09:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T09:14:11","slug":"uk-inflation-rate-rises-to-3-4-in-year-to-december-live-updates-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/381946\/","title":{"rendered":"UK inflation rate rises to 3.4% in year to December &#8211; live updates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Minimum wage increase has \u2018ripple effect\u2019 on prices, London business sayspublished at 06:31 GMT<\/p>\n<p>06:31 GMT<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1twxoxq-Contributor etflsgg2\">Adam Woods<br \/>Senior business and economics reporter<\/p>\n<p>      <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"A woman stands by a row of sewing machines\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/bab23c60-b26b-4d35-958c-bd68ca461609.jpg.webp.webp\"  width=\"1596\" height=\"898\" class=\"ssrcss-egie1y-Image edrdn950\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jenny Holloway is the chief executive of Fashion Enter, a garment manufacturer in London.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jenny says that increases in the minimum wage have put a squeeze on her business. When the minimum wage goes up, there is a \u201cripple effect\u201d whereby the wages of senior staff must go up in turn, she says. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Some of those costs are then passed on to the consumer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Electricity is another consideration, she says, and the factory is keeping its power usage as tight as possible in an effort to keep bills down.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">\u201cIt&#8217;s constantly making sure that we&#8217;re turning the lights off regularly. We&#8217;ve got all LED lighting now, for example. We&#8217;re on timers so the lights will go off,\u201d Jenny says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There are also some unexpected upsides to higher costs. While material costs have gone up by around 20%, the prices are higher for imported fabrics than for local ones.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">\u201cWe\u2019re finding Leicester far more competitive, and so from a perspective of carbon emissions and sustainability we\u2019d rather go local.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minimum wage increase has \u2018ripple effect\u2019 on prices, London business sayspublished at 06:31 GMT 06:31 GMT Adam WoodsSenior&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-381946","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}