British employers hired a record number of employees in November, adding to signs that the labor market has resisted the end of the government’s work permit scheme and highlighting the UK central bank’s dilemma over interest rates at this week’s meeting.
Data from the British revenue service pointed to 257,000 new hires last month, the highest number since records began in 2014.
The British central bank, under pressure to deal with rapidly rising inflation, wants to make sure that the expiry of the permit scheme at the end of September has not caused a spike in unemployment before any decision to raise interest rates for the first time since the pandemic .
But the rapid spread of the Ômicron variant of the coronavirus has raised fears of a new economic slowdown and led to bets against an interest rate hike by the bank as early as Thursday, following the December Monetary Policy Committee meeting.
“The combination of a tight labor market and evidently low unemployment in today’s data could alone be enough to justify an interest rate hike,” said Yael Selfin, chief economist at KPMG in the UK.
“However, with the emergence of the Ômicron variant in recent weeks, we now expect the committee to unanimously postpone raising interest rates until next year.”
Reference: CNN Brasil
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