Good morning!
At 7am today we have the UK unemployment rate, which is expected to come in at 4.3%, same as last time. [Update: unemployment remains at 4.3%, as expected.]
It’s a remarkable feature of the economy that unemployment has been at a level that many would consider to be “full employment”, at the same time as consumers have felt as if they are being squeezed.
According to the economics I learned, full employment happened when the unemployment rate was around 4%, which is more or less where the UK has been for the last several years:
A concern that often accompanies this discussion is that there are too many people outside of the workforce, i.e. that the total employment rate is too low.
However, the employment rate has risen over the past 10 years, and is nearly flat over the past 3 years.
The economy might have problems, but too many people out of work isn’t one of them!
Then this afternoon at 13:30, we’ll have US retail sales which are expected to grow by 0.5% month-on-month, a slight improvement on the 0.4% growth rate recorded last month. These figures are seasonally adjusted.
A level of growth of this size tends to be reported as “solid” or “steady” and is considered to be consistent with consumer-driven GDP growth.
The most recent US GDP estimate (for Q3) was a year-on-year growth rate of 2.8%. Donald Trump takes office again in less than 5 weeks, with a mission to boost the economy. As this is his second time at the wheel, perhaps there won't be too many surprises?
12.15pm. We've wrapped up the report for today! Cheers.
Explanatory notes
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