Bank Moderately Upbeat – Good Unemployment News

November 11, 2009 by admin

Though Mervyn King sounded downbeat at the press conference and
refused to rule out further asset purchases under the quantitative
easing programme, the Bank’s new forecasts are more upbeat and predict
higher inflation, compared with three months ago. In particular, the
Bank’s fan charts suggest growth will recover to around 4% over the
next couple of years. But it seems to be retaining its dovish stance on
policy. The inflation report is here.

Unemployment figures, meanwhile, continued the very encouraging
recent pattern. The new Labour Force Survey total for July-September,
2.46m, suggests unemployment fell in both August and September, The LFS
rate dropped from 7.9% to 7.8%, and employment rose by 6,000 over the
latest three months. Pay growth was very weak at 1.2% but these numbers
represented very good news. More here.

Originally published at David Smith’s EconomicsUK and reproduced here with the author’s permission.

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