Labour market

Record highs?  The labour market’s on-going resilience has ceased to be surprising. We’ll find out if hiring continued in the three months to August – a period in which last week’s GDP data suggested the economy was performing quite strongly. And was earnings growth still accelerating? The Bank of England will have been buoyed by last month’s release indicating that growth in regular pay was approaching the 3% mark (though that happened at the start of the year for manufacturing and earnings growth has been drifting down) – evolving broadly with their expectations.

Always worth checking in on vacancies data – this was still elevated last month… will we see signs of things slowing down?

Prices

Last month’s data covering inflation in August caught many of us out. CPI actually picked up to 2.7% from 2.5% in July against expectations of a movement in the other direction. Behind the increase was higher transport costs and higher prices for computer games and theatre tickets. 

Some of this will be temporary, with increases in recreation and culture fading. But with higher oil prices and energy price rises to come it looks like CPI will be more stubbornly above the Bank’s 2% target than perhaps expected earlier in the year.