Malcolm Offord hits out at ex-Reform UK MSP accusing her of ‘squatting’ in Holyrood<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n ONS deputy director of labour market statistics, David Freeman, said: \u201cWhile the labour market remains broadly flat in 2026, data from the latest quarter shows the employment rate edging up and a small drop in unemployment.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe number of workers on payroll remains slightly down over the same period, though data for the most recent month suggests that might be starting to level off.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe number of vacancies has seen its largest fall since the start of the year, concentrated mainly within smaller businesses, which cite increased labour costs as a key factor.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cRegular wage growth remained relatively stable, though total pay \u2013 including bonuses \u2013 has eased to its lowest rate in nearly six years.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
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The Bank of England is set to open a new office in Leeds (PA)\n<\/p>\n
\n Experts said the latest data reinforces expectations that the Bank of England could hike interest rates in November.\n<\/p>\n
\n Thomas Pugh, chief economist at RSM UK, said: \u201cFor the Bank of England, the stronger economy and stabilising labour market means there is no longer a trade-off between low growth and high inflation.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThis morning\u2019s data means an interest rate hike in November now looks exceedingly likely and will probably be followed by at least one more next year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows the unemployment rate for people aged 16 and over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":808813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-808812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808812","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=808812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/808813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}