Tomorrow’s Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee meeting marks the sixth anniversary of their decision to reduce the Bank Rate to an “emergency” record low of 0.5%.
Latest Blogposts
Chart of the Week: Week 8, 2015: Zero Hour Contracts
The Office for National Statistics published their annual survey of “Zero Hour Contracts” this morning, which suggested that the number of such contracts had grown to 697,000 in 2014, or 2.26% of all employees.
Chart of the Week: Week 7, 2015: Earnings vs. Prices
This week we’ve received two big bits of economic news: CPI inflation fell to just 0.3% in January, while earnings growth remained roughly steady at 1.7% in the three months to December.
Chart of the Week: Week 6, 2015: UK Production Index
Yesterday, the Office for National Statistics released the index of the output for the production industries in December 2014.
Chart of the Week: Week 5, 2015: EU Youth Unemployment
European unemployment figures for December 2014 were released at the end of last week, and both the headline figure and youth unemployment were down compared to the end of 2013 (unemployment was down from 10.6% to 9.9% and youth unemployment was down from 23.1% to 21.4%).
Chart of the Week: Week 4, 2015: UK GDP Per Capita
Preliminary growth figures for the final quarter of last year were released yesterday, and although quarterly growth slowed down to 0.5%, 2014 was still the best year of growth since 2007 with an annual rate of 2.6%.