LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s wage growth slowed late last year to its slowest pace in more than a year, but the deceleration was smaller than expected, official data showed Tuesday.
The Bank of England (BoE) is closely monitoring wage growth to assess the inflationary pressure that remains in the economy and to determine whether it can begin to consider cutting its key interest rates, which have reached their highest level ever. high since 2008.
The average weekly wage, excluding bonus, increased by 6.2% in the last three months of 2023 compared to the same period a year ago, the National Statistics Office said.
Economists polled by Reuters on average forecast a slowdown in growth to 6.0% over the October-December period on an annual basis.
Over the three months to November, the increase was 6.7%.
In the foreign exchange market, the British pound strengthened against the US dollar immediately after the release of this data. Around 07:40 GMT, the pound gained 0.15% to 1.2645 dollars.
(Reporting William Schomberg and Suban Abdulla; Claude Chendjou, editing by Zhifan Liu)
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