10:20 am, March 12, 2024
Wage growth in Britain has eased back as the jobless rate rose but earnings are still said to be outpacing inflation.
That’s according to latest official figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which said average regular pay growth excluding bonuses fell to 6.1% in the quarter to January – down from 6.2% in the three months to December and the slowest growth for more than a year.
However, when taking Consumer Prices Index inflation into account, it said real regular wages rose by 2%, which is the highest since the summer of 2019, excluding the pandemic-skewed years.
The ONS said the unemployment rate unexpectedly went up to 3.9% in the three months to January from 3.8% in the previous three months, while vacancies dropped by 43,000 to 908,000 quarter on quarter in the three months to February – the 20th consecutive fall.
Most economists had expected the jobless rate to stay at 3.8%.
Liz McKeown, ONS director of economic statistics, said: ‘Recent trends in the jobs market are continuing, with earnings, in cash terms, growing more slowly than recently, but thanks to lower inflation, real-terms pay continues to increase.
‘The number of job vacancies has also been falling for coming up to two years, although the total remains more than 100,000 above its pre-pandemic level.
‘Over the last year, there was little change in the proportions of people who are employed, unemployed or neither working nor looking for work, although the overall number of people in work is still rising.’
Pictured at top are workers at London’s Canary Wharf. (Image credit: Victoria Jones/PA)
