🇬🇧Cable FX Macro Weekly Note: U.K. Labour Report

**As seen in Risk In The Week report 10/07/22, subscribe at cablefxm.co.uk/reports

Last month, the claimant count increased by 6.3K, however, the rate was unchanged at 3.8%, off the 5.4% seen a year before. The unemployment rate came in at 3.6%, which was lower than the median estimate of 3.8% as the May to July labour force saw an increase of 40K to 32.75 million jobs. The lowest unemployment rate since 1974 goes to show the tightness of the labour market in the U.K., despite high inflation and a slowing economy, people are still being added to the labour force. The wage figures and the relatively strong labour additions went to feed expectations of further BoE tightening ahead. Analysts at ING say that the BoE’s latest survey show firms are not making progress in the labour shortage front, this could feed into the wage growth expectations. ING sees the central bank hiking the Bank Rate by 100bps in November, they add that much of this will depend on how GBP trades in the meantime. The latest survey compiled by Bloomberg shows economists expect the unemployment rate to rise from here, they expect it to hit 4.3% by the first quarter of next year and 4.6% by the fourth quarter.