{"id":436432,"date":"2026-08-18T15:22:33","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T08:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/uk-labour-market-shows-further-signs-of-cooling-in-june-436432\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T15:22:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T08:22:33","slug":"uk-labour-market-shows-further-signs-of-cooling-in-june","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/uk-labour-market-shows-further-signs-of-cooling-in-june-436432\/","title":{"rendered":"UK labour market shows further signs of cooling in June"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">Just a little catch up on things as we had some technical issues for a couple of hours. Apologies on that.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">Earlier at the start of the session, we had the UK labour market report for June (and July payrolls) out and the numbers showed the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>June ILO unemployment rate 4.9% vs 4.8% expected; Prior 4.9%<\/li>\n<li>June employment change 83k vs 129k expected; Prior 147k<\/li>\n<li>June average weekly earnings +4.1% vs +4.0% 3m\/y expected; Prior +4.4% (R)<\/li>\n<li>June average weekly earnings (ex bonus) +3.5% vs +3.4% 3m\/y expected; Prior +3.4%<\/li>\n<li>July payrolls change -13k; Prior -13k (R)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">All in all, the trend continues to reaffirm some slight softening in the labour market with payrolls dropping again. Meanwhile, wage prices are also keeping thereabouts and slightly cooler when looking at nominal prices.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">The jobless rate continues to keep at 4.9% while job vacancies fell\u00a0to their lowest level in more than five years. On the latter, if excluding the Covid pandemic period,\u00a0vacancies are at their lowest since late 2014.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">ONS noted that:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">&#8220;The labour market picture is little changed overall, with some softening still evident. Employment, unemployment and inactivity rates have all remained steady, while the number of employees on payroll fell slightly in the latest quarter.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">That pretty much sums it up.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">While the data does point to some signs of cooling in the economy, it&#8217;s not one to really put off the BOE from another rate hike &#8211; if needed &#8211; in the battle against inflation. That especially since ONS has been having data quality issues with regards to the labour market. For more on that, you can check this post <a href=\"https:\/\/investinglive.com\/news\/uk-stats-office-to-only-decide-in-july-next-year-on-plausibility-of-transition-to-improved-labour-market-data\/\" rel=\"follow\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">So, the central bank will still take caution in deciphering the report and definitely take note on the signals that point to further cooling in labour market conditions. But all in all, inflation remains the key metric that is bugging policymakers at the moment.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">\n<p>                            This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just a little catch up on things as we had some technical issues for a couple of hours. Apologies on that. Earlier at the start of the session, we had the UK&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-436432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}