Wages grow at fastest rate for a decade
Salaries up 4% on a year ago
WAGeS are growing at their fastest rate for a decade as Britain’s jobs miracle continues despite turmoil in Westminster.
the average annual salary was 4 per cent higher in the three months to July than a year earlier – the most rapid pace of growth since the throes of the financial crisis in June 2008.
Meanwhile, the employment rate remains at a joint record high of 76.1 per cent, with 32.8million people in work, according to the Office for national Statistics. Unemployment now stands at 3.8 per cent – its lowest level since 1974.
the economy has added 3.6million jobs since the tories came to power in 2010, with more than a million since the Brexit vote. these figures suggest the economy remains robust, and will further reduce fears of a possible recession.
Pay is growing significantly faster than inflation, which currently stands at 2.1 per cent – meaning families’ earnings are stretching further each month.
Mims Davies, minister for employment, said this means ‘we’re seeing a sustained boost in pay, supporting consumer confidence and giving a vital lift to millions of households who gain from greater financial security’. She added: ‘this joint record employment rate and decadeslow unemployment shows our labour market is booming.’
Unemployment has dropped by 1.2million since 2010, and the number of people classed as long-term unemployed – those who have been out of a job for more than a year – has more than halved in the past five years, dropping to 327,000.
tej Parikh, chief economist at the institute of Directors, said: ‘As so many people have entered work, there has been an uplift to household incomes which has helped to keep consumers ticking.
‘For a long time, businesses have been eager to expand their workforce despite difficult economic conditions.’
the surge in employment has been driven chiefly by women, with the female employment rate now at 72.1 per cent. in the last year, the number of working women rose by 284,000 – far outstripping the 86,000 increase in male workers.
A long-running increase in women working over the age of 50 is continuing, with more than 5million in employment.
this is thought to have been partly driven by increases to the state pension
‘Employment surge driven by women’
age – which is now 65 for women. the rising female employment has also triggered a sharp fall in the number of stayat-home mothers.
Just 1.8million women now look after their home or family full time, a fall of 418,000 since 2009.
the employment figures will help dispel fears of a prolonged downturn, after the economy shrank by 0.2 per cent in the second quarter of 2019.
Another contraction in the third quarter of this year would mean the country is technically in recession, but this is thought to be unlikely after positive economic figures for the month of July.
Although the jobs market remains solid, economists pointed to a drop in the number of vacancies as evidence the longrunning boom may be coming to an end.
WAGES growing at their fastest for a decade – twice the rate of inflation – and unemployment at its lowest since 1974. This is the Britain we hardly hear about in the suffocating, doom-and-gloom era of Brexit.
While our dysfunctional political class does its best to trash Britain’s reputation, business is getting on with the job. There are 3.6million more jobs for people now than in 2010.
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Jeremy Corbyn is planning to scupper the economy with an agenda redolent of the dismal Seventies – promising to unleash union power and create a socalled Workers’ Protection Agency, to hunt down ‘bad bosses’.
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