LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s wage growth, closely watched by the Bank of England, has slowed from its record high and job vacancies have also fallen, official figures showed on Tuesday, a sign that the job market is losing momentum.

The average UK salary, excluding bonuses, rose 7.8% from a year earlier in the three months to August, down from the upwardly revised figure of 7.9% recorded in the three months to July, the first decline since January.

This figure published by the British Statistics Office was in line with the expectations of economists polled by Reuters.

“Although wage growth is still far too strong for the Bank of England’s liking, there is nothing in the latest data that is likely to cause the committee to raise rates at the November meeting,” said James Smith, economist at ING.

Private sector wages – the component most closely monitored by the BoE – saw their annual growth slow to 8.0% in the three months to August, compared to 8.1% previously.

Annual growth in total compensation, a more volatile measure that includes bonuses, slowed more than expected to 8.1% in the quarter ending in August, compared with 8.5% (unrevised) for the May period. to July.

However, with consumer price inflation at 6.7% in August, real wage growth was much lower, rising 0.7% year-on-year in the three months to ‘august.

The number of job vacancies in the three months to September fell to 988,000, its lowest level in two years, according to data released Tuesday. The number of vacant jobs has fallen by more than a quarter of a million over the past year, although it is still almost 25% higher than before the pandemic.

Provisional payroll data showed there were 11,000 fewer people employed in September compared to August, representing a stabilization in hiring after the number of workers increased by more than a million since the start of the pandemic.

(Written by David Milliken, Corentin Chappron, edited by Kate Entringer)

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