Archive

October 14, 2025
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UK: Mixed Messages On Labour Market

  • Most narratives can find some support in the latest labour market report, preserving uncertainty that should keep the BoE on hold at least until some clarity emerges.
  • Unemployment has increased (LFS) or stabilised (payrolls), while pay is shockingly resurgent (inc-bonuses), slowing as expected (ex-bonus) or stagnating (private pay).
  • Weakness isn’t as clear as the consensus and press sometimes make out, but concerns aren’t invalidated. We still expect resilience to preserve excess inflation hawkishly.

By Philip Rush


October 09, 2025
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UK: Poor Productivity Paradigms

  • The OBR looks likely to trim its productivity trend assumption to 1%, which would still be a bullish break from the current stagnation. Trends rarely break outside recessions.
  • High taxes are squeezing the most productive and being transferred to the inactive. It should not be surprising that the UK’s political choices have stalled productivity.
  • We see no reason to think the UK will pull off an internationally exceptional jobs-light boom from here. Ongoing stagnation would extend the UK’s rule for fiscal slippage.

By Philip Rush


October 06, 2025
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HEM: Oct-25 Views & Challenges

  • Hawkish inflation and policy rate pricing shifts toward our UK/EA view did not stop US rates frontloading more cuts.
  • We still see markets overpricing easing, with UK inflation expectations stuck above target, and neutral rates high.
  • A break in activity data, especially unemployment, and underlying price/wage inflation, would threaten our view.

October 02, 2025
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EA: Rounding Jobs For Migrants

  • A surprise rise in EA unemployment reflects rounding rather than alarming weakness, with labour supply and demand still surging. Finland’s woes are more idiosyncratic.
  • Supply has trended much faster post-pandemic, sustaining demand at its old trend without extreme capacity constraints. Migration has more than accounted for the rise.
  • Ukrainians are dominating the flow and complicating the read through to disinflationary spare capacity. Wage growth is an even more critical signal when supply is uncertain.

By Philip Rush