UK: Focus on employment data – Nomura

Analysts at Nomura notes that last month’s employment report was a mixed bag for the UK economy and on the positive side the unemployment rate fell from 4.2% to 4.0%, marking another fresh low since the mid-1970s.

Key Quotes

“While employment grew less quickly than previously (just 42k during Q2), which was the smallest rise since last autumn, there was a more than 100k rise in full-time employment at the expense of falling part-time.”

“Our favoured measure of wage growth (3m annualised rate of private sector regular pay) slowed in the latest report, but we have now seen monthly rises of 0.4% and 0.2% in the previous two months – as a result, another fairly normal 0.2% monthly increase would shift the annualised rate back up again to a decent rate of 3.5%.”