UK jobs preview: Headline wage growth to hold steady at 2.8% - TDS

Analysts at TDS offer insights on what to expect from the UK labour market report scheduled for release at 09.30GMT later today.

Key Quotes:

“We’re in line with consensus for today’s labour market data in looking for the unemployment rate to remain unchanged at 4.8% and for headline wage growth to hold steady at 2.8%, both for the month of December. While it’s only the 6th line item in Bloomberg, one thing we’ll be keeping a closer eye on than usual is 3m/3m employment growth, which dipped below zero the last two months.”

“We’ve seen short-lived dips into negative territory before over the last few years while all other indications were pointing to a steady or improving labour market (May-June 2015 and Feb-March 2013) so this may be more of a statistical blip than anything particularly nefarious. But it’s certainly worth watching more closely, given that a deterioration in the labour market is one of the biggest risk factors we see as something that could push the BoE toward easing further.”