The November DMP survey was conducted between 4 and 18 November and received 2,601 responses.
Annual private sector output price inflation in the DMP was 7.4% in the three months to November, 0.2 percentage points lower than in the three months to October. The single month figure for November was 7.2%, down from 7.8% in October. Expected year-ahead annual output price inflation was 6.2% in the three months to November, down from 6.4% the previous month (the single month data was 5.7%, 0.5 percentage points lower than in October).
Perceptions of annual CPI inflation in November averaged 10.3%. Looking ahead, DMP members expected CPI inflation to be 7.2% one-year ahead, down from 7.6% in the October survey, and 3.9% in three years’ time.
Over the 12 months to November, average unit costs were estimated to have increased by 10.8%. Over the next 12 months, firms expected unit cost growth to be 8.6%, on average. Average wage growth was reported to have been 6.1% over the 12 months to November, and was expected to be 5.8% over the next 12 months.
Recruitment difficulties are reported to have begun to ease. In November, 78% of firms reported they were finding it harder to recruit new employees compared with normal. Of those, 46% reported that it was ‘much harder’, 8 percentage points lower than in October. Expected year-ahead employment growth was 1.5% in the three months to October, down from 1.8% in the previous month and continuing the decline seen since April.
The level of overall business uncertainty slightly down in November. 60% of respondents reported that uncertainty for their business was ‘high’ or ‘very high’ at the moment, 5 percentage points lower than in October.
New questions were added to the DMP survey in November asking businesses about the impact of higher interest rates. The average effective interest rate on all borrowing (both bank and market based) was reported to have increased by 1.3 percentage points since the end of 2021, and respondents expected their borrowing rates to increase by a further 1 percentage point over the year-ahead.
Businesses expect higher interest rates to lead to lower investment and employment over the next year. On average, businesses estimated that higher rates will lower their investment by 8.4% and employment by 2.3%, relative to what would have otherwise happened.
Published on
01 December 2022
The DMP was set up in August 2016 by the Bank of England together with academics from Stanford University and the University of Nottingham. It was designed to be representative of the population of UK businesses. All results are weighted. See Bloom et al (2017) for more details.
The DMP receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.