The UK’s labour market is cooling down, slowly. Although unemployment rose from 3.7 per cent to 3.8 per cent, figures published by the Office for National Statistics this morning show that job vacancies have fallen for the ninth consecutive period. They’re now down 47,000 but still stand at over a million. The number of people out of work and not seeking it (economically inactive) fell too, as students started hunting for work.
The most startling figures, however, were those for wage growth. They showed that average pay rose 6.6 per cent in the three months to February. Hefty pay raises in normal times – but adjusted for inflation, that’s a real terms fall of 3 per cent: one of the largest falls in wages since comparable records began in 2001. So wage pressures – which the Bank of England feared was fuelling inflation rather than chasing it – seem to be easing.

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