Part-time jobs rebound
There were some potential seasonality issues in last month's jobs figures, meaning that we were always likely to get a bit of a catch-up this month, as I noted on the Twitter early this morning.
And indeed, employment increased +64,900 in August, although it was almost all part-time work in nature.
After accounting for revisions, total employment was around +75,000 than reported last month at a record high 14.1 million.
Population growth is running at an unprecedented rate, but this solid trend in employment growth was enough to hold the unemployment rate at 3.7 per cent, for now at least.
Despite this, slack in the labour force is clearly now increasing.
The underemployment rate has increased from just 5.8 per cent in February to 6.2 per cent, while the underutilisation rate is now 10.2 per cent, having fallen as low as 9.3 per cent in October 2022.
This is a Goldilocks result, with the rising rate of underutilisation pointing to slower wages growth ahead, and no further requirement for interest rate hikes.
James Foster ran through the detailed figures here.
