The UK jobless rate matched its lowest since 1975 in the three months through January, but Britons are seeing their wages go nowhere.
Unemployment unexpectedly declined to 4.7 percent, matching the rate it last reached in 2005, the British Office for National Statistics said yesterday.
The number of people working rose by 92,000 to 31.9 million, the biggest increase since summer last year.
The British economy has defied predictions of doom since the Brexit vote, expanding at a robust 0.7 percent at the end of last year, but the latest data showed cost pressures in the labor market remain subdued.
Basic wage growth slowed to 2.3 percent. With the falling pound pushing up inflation, real incomes on some estimates are set for their worst year since 2013, putting a brake on the consumer spending that drives growth.
The figures might reinforce speculation that the first increase in interest rates since 2007 remains a long way off.
Bank of England officials meeting this week are expected to keep the benchmark rate at a record-low 0.25 percent, with traders pricing in less than a 25 percent chance of a hike this year.
Policymakers now judge the economy can sustain unemployment as low as 4.5 percent without generating inflation.
Adjusted for inflation, basic earnings grew just 0.8 percent in the three-month period, the least since 2014. In January alone, there was no growth at all.
Brexit is expected to take its toll on the labor market this year, as British Prime Minister Theresa May prepares to trigger two years of divorce talks with the EU this month.
The uncertainty will see the jobless rate rise to 5.1 percent by the end of the this year, Britain’s Office for Budget Responsibility said last week.
Employment is forecast to rise by 100,000, not enough to absorb the demands of a growing workforce.
In January, the jobless rate climbed to 4.8 percent.
The improvement in the latest period was driven by a 136,000-increase in the number of full-time workers.
The number of people who work for themselves climbed 49,000 to a record 4.8 million, underscoring the pressure on British Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond to back down on a proposed £2 billion (US$2.4 billion) tax increase on the self-employed.
The move, announced in the budget last week, broke an election pledge and many Conservatives fear a backlash in Tory heartlands.
Self-employed people now account for a record 15 percent of all workers, compared with 13 percent before the 2008 financial crisis.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day