London: Britain’s unemployment rate remains at a 42-year low, official data showed, but workers’ wages are still being eroded by inflation. The jobless rate — or the proportion of the workforce that is unemployed — stood at 4.3 per cent in the three months to the end of October, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in a statement. That was unchanged from the three months to September, and the lowest rate since 1975.
Average weekly earnings rose by 2.5 per cent year-on-year in the three-month period to October, but lagged behind Britain’s annual inflation rate of 3.1 per cent. Adjusted for inflation, workers’ weekly earnings fell 0.4 per cent year-on-year from August to October — a further erosion of purchasing power.
Britain’s Consumer Prices Index 12-month inflation rate hit a near six-year high last month, fuelled by the rising cost of air fares, computer games and recreational goods, the ONS revealed on Tuesday.
Inflation has soared in 2017 as a Brexit-hit pound ramps up import costs, which led the Bank of England to raise its key interest rate for the first time in a decade last month.
Some 1.4 million people were unemployed at the end of October. That was down 26,000 on a year earlier.
The MPC had last month voted 7-2 to ramp up interest rates to 0.50 per cent from a record low of 0.25 per cent in order to tackle high inflation.
That was the first BoE hike since before the financial crisis, when the rate was ratcheted up as high as 5.75 per cent in July 2007. — AFP
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
