Britain’s super-hot labour market showed signs of cooling in official data published; as businesses became more cautious about hiring and workers suffered a record fall in their basic wages.
The unemployment rate of 3.8% in the three months to June was unchanged from last month’s report; close to a half-century low despite Bank of England warnings that the economy might slip into recession this year.
The number of people in work grew by 160,000 in the April-June period compared with the quarter before; but this was a lot less than expected in a Reuters poll of economists, which had pointed to an increase of 256,000.
The number of unemployed people rose slightly, pushed up by people returning to the labour market to look for jobs.
Job vacancies in the three months to July fell for the first time since mid-2020 but stayed close to a record high at 1.274 million.