UK: No surprises in employment data - TDS

Research Team at TDS, suggests that the UK employment data didn’t provide any significant surprises as the headline wage growth was much weaker than expected, falling from 2.1% to 1.8%, instead of the uptick to 2.3% expected.

Key Quotes

“That was the market’s initial focus given a suggestion of limited wage pressures, but that is being driven by issues in timing of bonuses, so focusing on regular pay ex-bonus, the trend was better than expected in holding flat at 2.2%.

Jobless claims rose slightly by 6.7k in March, but that comes after three strong months so a bit of normalization there, with the ILO unemployment rate unchanged at 5.1%. The big picture is there is nothing here that will change the BoE's assessment of the situation one way or the other.”