September’s labour market report is unlikely to sway the Bank of England’s plans for gradual rate cuts, as communicated at last week’s monetary policy meeting. With private sector wage growth steady, today’s data gives few reasons to bring forward its next cut to December. We continue to expect the monetary policy committee to cut again only in early 2025. Labour market data released on Tuesday continues to show that the employment and wage growth is softening, but only very gradually.
9 per cent rise, with the surprise uptick driven by one-off payments to public sector employees in the civil service. The unemployment rate rose more strongly than expected, at 4.3 per cent, against consensus expectations of a 4.1 per cent increase. Given the low quality of this data, however, the BoE will continue to ignore it. Finally, experimental payrolls data from HMRC also showed a strong uptick in wage growth for the month of October.