Monetary Policy Summary

The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) sets monetary policy to meet the 2% inflation target, and in a way that helps to sustain growth and employment. At its meeting ending on 2 August 2023, the MPC voted by a majority of 6–3 to increase Bank Rate by 0.25 percentage points, to 5.25%. Two members preferred to increase Bank Rate by 0.5 percentage points, to 5.5%, and one member preferred to maintain Bank Rate at 5%.

The Committee’s updated projections for activity and inflation are set out in the accompanying August Monetary Policy Report. These are conditioned on a market-implied path for Bank Rate that rises to a peak of just over 6% and averages just under 5½% over the three-year forecast period, compared with an average of just over 4% for the equivalent period at the time of the May Report. The sterling effective exchange rate is around 4% higher than in the May Report.

Underlying quarterly GDP growth has been around 0.2% during the first half of this year. Bank staff expect a similar growth rate in the near term, reflecting more resilient household income and retail sales volumes, and most business surveys over recent months. Some more recent indicators show signs of weakening, however, including the July S&P Global/CIPS UK composite PMI.

The labour market remains tight but there are some indications that it is loosening. The LFS unemployment rate rose to 4.0% in the three months to May, somewhat higher than expected in the May Report, and the vacancies to unemployment ratio has continued to fall, although the latter still remains above historical averages.

Annual private sector regular pay growth increased to 7.7% in the three months to May, materially above expectations at the time of the May Report, and three-month on three-month growth in this measure of pay has picked up further. Earnings growth is nevertheless expected to decline in coming quarters, to around 6% by the end of this year, although there is uncertainty around this near-term outlook.

Twelve-month CPI inflation fell from 8.7% in May to 7.9% in June, lower than expected at the time of the Committee’s previous meeting. Within this, core goods and services CPI inflation were both lower than expected, although the downside news in the latter, which is more likely to be informative about persistent inflationary pressures, was much smaller. Compared to the May Report projections, June CPI inflation was in line with expectations.

CPI inflation remains well above the 2% target. It is expected to fall significantly further, to around 5% by the end of the year, accounted for by lower energy, and to a lesser degree, food and core goods price inflation. Services price inflation, however, is projected to remain elevated at close to its current rate in the near term.

In the MPC’s August most likely, or modal, projection conditioned on market interest rates, CPI inflation returns to the 2% target by 2025 Q2. It then falls below the target in the medium term, as an increasing degree of economic slack reduces domestic inflationary pressures, alongside declining external cost pressures. The Committee has decided in this forecast to bring some of the upside risks to inflation from persistence into its modal projection, pushing up on this inflation projection in the medium term relative to the May Report.

The Committee continues to judge that risks around the modal inflation forecast are skewed to the upside, albeit by less than in May, reflecting the possibility that the second-round effects of external cost shocks on inflation in wages and domestic prices take longer to unwind than they did to emerge. Mean CPI inflation, which incorporates these risks, is 2.0% and 1.9% at the two and three-year horizons respectively.

The MPC’s remit is clear that the inflation target applies at all times, reflecting the primacy of price stability in the UK monetary policy framework. The framework recognises that there will be occasions when inflation will depart from the target as a result of shocks and disturbances. Monetary policy will ensure that CPI inflation returns to the 2% target sustainably in the medium term.

Recent data outturns have been mixed. However, some key indicators, notably wage growth, suggest that some of the risks from more persistent inflationary pressures may have begun to crystallise. At this meeting, the Committee voted to increase Bank Rate by 0.25 percentage points, to 5.25%.

Given the significant increase in Bank Rate since the start of this tightening cycle, the current monetary policy stance is restrictive. The MPC will continue to monitor closely indications of persistent inflationary pressures and resilience in the economy as a whole, including the tightness of labour market conditions and the behaviour of wage growth and services price inflation. If there were to be evidence of more persistent pressures, then further tightening in monetary policy would be required. The MPC will ensure that Bank Rate is sufficiently restrictive for sufficiently long to return inflation to the 2% target sustainably in the medium term, in line with its remit.

1: The economic outlook

1.1: The conditioning assumptions underlying the MPC’s projections

As set out in Table 1.B, the MPC’s projections are conditioned on:

• The paths for policy rates implied by financial markets, as captured in the 15-working day average of forward interest rates to 25 July, which are higher than in the May Monetary Policy Report (Chart 2.3). In particular, the market-implied path for Bank Rate in the United Kingdom rises to a peak of just over 6% and averages just under 5½% over the next three years, compared with an average of just over 4% for the equivalent period at the time of the May Report.
• A path for the sterling effective exchange rate index that is around 3½% stronger on average than in the May Report, but is depreciating gradually over the forecast period given the role for expected interest rate differentials in the Committee’s conditioning assumption.
• Fiscal policy that evolves in line with announced government policies to date, including the most recent measures in the Spring Budget.
• Wholesale energy prices that follow their respective futures curves over the forecast period. Since May, gas and crude oil futures curves have moved slightly lower. Significant uncertainty remains around the outlook for wholesale energy prices.
• Household energy prices that, from 2023 Q3, move in line with Bank staff estimates of the Ofgem price cap implied by the path of wholesale energy prices (Section 2.6), having previously been determined by the Energy Price Guarantee.

1.2: Key judgements and risks

1.2: Key judgement 1

Past increases in Bank Rate, and the higher path of market interest rates on which the forecast is conditioned, weigh to an increasing degree on the UK economy in coming quarters. GDP growth remains below pre-pandemic rates in the medium term, also reflecting relatively weak potential supply and a waning boost from fiscal policy.

UK GDP is expected to have grown by 0.1% in 2023 Q2, slowed by the additional bank holiday for the King’s Coronation. Underlying quarterly growth is judged to have been around 0.2% during the first half of this year and Bank staff expect a similar rate in the near term. This is consistent with most business surveys of output over recent months, and developments in household income and retail sales volumes.

Given the continued resilience of economic activity over recent months, the Committee has increased somewhat its judgement from recent forecast rounds to boost the expected path of demand. This reflects a number of factors, including the possibility of lower precautionary saving by households than previously assumed, in turn related to a lower risk of job loss given the continued strength in labour market activity (Key judgement 2).

The pass-through of past increases in Bank Rate, and the latest, significantly higher, market-implied interest rate path on which the forecast is conditioned (Section 1.1), nonetheless push down on GDP over the forecast period. As well as increasing the cost of borrowing, Bank Rate rises affect asset prices, incomes and the exchange rate, all of which will influence the decisions taken by firms and households. This is discussed in more detail in Section 2.3.

The Committee is continuing to monitor closely the impact of the significant increases in Bank Rate so far. Both the GfK consumer confidence index and the flash S&P Global/CIPS UK composite PMI fell quite sharply in July, following the 0.5 percentage point increase in Bank Rate at the June MPC meeting. Realised and expected real sales growth in the latest Decision Maker Panel were unchanged in the three months to July, however. In the most recent period, a greater number of contacts of the Bank’s Agents reported a slowing in the outlook for activity, with the increase in interest rates having played a role.

Taking account of all announced government plans, the positive impacts of past fiscal loosening measures on the level of GDP unwind, which generally pulls down on GDP growth over much of the forecast period.

In the Committee’s August projection, GDP growth is projected to weaken into 2024, as past increases in Bank Rate, and the path of market interest rates on which the forecast is conditioned, weigh on demand to an increasing degree. GDP growth recovers over the second half of the forecast period, although it remains below pre-pandemic rates in the medium term. As well as the impact of higher interest rates, this reflects relatively weak potential supply (Key judgement 1 in the February 2023 Report) and a waning boost from fiscal policy.

Calendar-year GDP growth is expected to be ½% in 2023 and in 2024, and ¼% in 2025 (Table 1.D). Four-quarter GDP growth picks up to just over 1% by 2026 Q3 (Chart 1.1).

Relative to the May Monetary Policy Report projection, quarterly GDP growth is expected to be weaker throughout much of the forecast period, particularly during 2024 and at the beginning of 2025. The level of GDP is around ¾% lower by the end of the forecast period. That lower level reflects the projected impact of the higher path of market interest rates on which the forecast is conditioned and, to a lesser degree, the estimated impact of the exchange rate appreciation (Section 1.1). These factors have been offset partially by the Committee’s judgement to boost demand, given the continued resilience of economic activity over recent months.

Chart 1.1: GDP growth projection based on market interest rate expectations, other policy measures as announced

Footnotes

• The fan chart depicts the probability of various outcomes for GDP growth. It has been conditioned on Bank Rate following a path implied by market yields, but allows the Committee’s judgement on the risks around the other conditioning assumptions set out in Section 1.1, including wholesale energy prices, to affect the calibration of the fan chart skew. To the left of the shaded area, the distribution reflects uncertainty around revisions to the data over the past. To the right of the shaded area, the distribution reflects uncertainty over the evolution of GDP growth in the future. If economic circumstances identical to today’s were to prevail on 100 occasions, the MPC’s best collective judgement is that the mature estimate of GDP growth would lie within the darkest central band on only 30 of those occasions. The fan chart is constructed so that outturns are also expected to lie within each pair of the lighter aqua areas on 30 occasions. In any particular quarter of the forecast period, GDP growth is therefore expected to lie somewhere within the fan on 90 out of 100 occasions. And on the remaining 10 out of 100 occasions GDP growth can fall anywhere outside the aqua area of the fan chart. Over the forecast period, this has been depicted by the grey background. See the Box on page 39 of the November 2007 Inflation Report for a fuller description of the fan chart and what it represents.

In the GDP projection conditioned on the alternative assumption of constant interest rates at 5.25% over the forecast period, growth is broadly similar on average across the forecast period to the MPC’s projection conditioned on market rates, as the market curve is higher than the constant rate assumption in coming quarters but then falls below it further out.

Within the components of GDP underpinning the August most likely, or modal, projection conditioned on market interest rates, calendar-year household spending is expected to rise by ½% in 2023, and by ¾% in 2024 and 2025 (Table 1.D). Real post-tax household labour income is projected to grow modestly over the forecast period. In part reflecting the Committee’s judgement to boost demand, the household saving ratio, which has remained above its pre-pandemic level, is expected to decline moderately, towards a level that is broadly consistent with its past relationship with wealth, interest rates and unemployment. The medium-term paths of both consumption and household income are nonetheless somewhat weaker than in the May Report.

Business investment is expected to rise by 1¾% in 2023, to fall by 2% in 2024 and to increase by 1¾% in 2025. This is broadly similar across the whole forecast period to that in the May Report.

In large part reflecting the transmission of higher interest rates, housing investment is expected to fall significantly, by around 6% in both 2023 and 2024, and by 3% in 2025. This profile is weaker than in the May Report.

UK-weighted world GDP is projected to be slightly lower in the near term than in the May Report, accounted for primarily by weakness in the euro area and in China. Near-term activity in the United States is expected to be slightly stronger, however. As in the United Kingdom, global growth is being pulled down by the higher market-implied path of interest rates. Overall, global GDP is expected to grow at a moderate pace throughout the forecast period, broadly unchanged from the May Report in the medium term. In the MPC’s modal projection, annual UK-weighted world GDP growth is projected to rise from 1½% to 2% over the forecast period (Table 1.D). That compares with average annual growth of around 2½% in the decade prior to the pandemic.

The risks around the projection for UK GDP growth are judged to be broadly balanced.

There are risks in both directions around the central projections for household spending and GDP, including related to the Committee’s judgements to boost the expected path of demand in light of recent strength in the labour market. Spending could be stronger than expected if some households choose to save less or run down existing stocks of savings to a greater extent. As set out in Annex 1 of this Report, external forecasters’ average medium-term projections for GDP remain stronger than the MPC’s, particularly in 2025. Conversely, demand could be weaker than expected if some people become more worried about their job security and try to build up their savings to a greater extent, or if there is less scope for some households to run down existing stocks of savings that have already been eroded in real terms by high inflation. Were the weaker trend in the most recent readings of some indicators of activity to continue, there could be a downside risk to the MPC’s near-term GDP projection.

There are also risks related more particularly to the transmission of monetary policy. There may be the potential for remortgaging behaviour to slow or weaken the transmission of higher interest rates to the economy, including if more households than usual choose to extend the terms of their mortgage than choose to shorten their terms. Such behaviour would have to be more widespread than in the past to have a material impact on the transmission of policy, however, and there are limits on how far mortgagors are able to extend terms. There could also be changes in the response of consumption to higher interest rates, for example if some mortgagors who need to refinance in the future take, or are already taking, advance actions to prepare for spending more on interest costs.

Regarding the housing channel of monetary policy, several factors should limit the impact of higher interest rates on mortgage defaults and therefore may reduce downward pressure on house prices from any forced sales of owner-occupied properties. For example, the Financial Policy Committee’s mortgage market measures and the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA’s) responsible lending requirements have increased borrower resilience, and robust capital and profitability mean that UK banks have options to offer forbearance. In addition, mortgage lenders, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the FCA agreed new support measures for residential mortgage holders as part of the Mortgage Charter published on 26 June. There could, however, be greater sales of properties by buy-to-let investors, given the sector’s larger size relative to previous downturns and the range of factors currently putting pressure on investors’ profitability, although market exits from landlords have not so far been on a scale that is likely to have a material impact on overall house prices (Section 2.1 of the July 2023 Financial Stability Report).

More generally, the MPC’s aggregate projections are constructed based in large part on the average relationships over the past between Bank Rate, other financial instruments and economic activity. The Committee will continue to keep all of these relationships under review, including how they may have changed during the current monetary policy tightening cycle.

1.2: Key judgement 2

The UK economy has been in excess demand over recent quarters, but an increasing degree of economic slack is expected to emerge after the middle of next year.

The Committee continues to judge that there has been a significant margin of excess demand in the economy over recent quarters, in part reflecting the weakness of potential supply. That excess demand can be accounted for by both the tightness of the labour market and a higher than normal degree of capacity utilisation within companies. In part reflecting the resilience of activity over recent months, there is judged to be greater excess demand currently than expected in the May Report.

There are nevertheless some indications that the labour market is loosening (Section 2.5). The LFS unemployment rate rose to 4.0% in the three months to May and is also expected to have been at that level in 2023 Q2. This is 0.2 percentage points higher than expected in the May Report. The vacancies to unemployment ratio has been falling since mid-2022, although it remains above its 2019 Q4 level. The Bank’s Agents have reported that recruitment conditions remain tighter than normal for most of their contacts, but that they have eased significantly for lower-skilled roles.

The unemployment rate is expected to be slightly above 4% during the second half of 2023, slightly below the latest estimate of the medium-term equilibrium rate of unemployment. Based on a simple extrapolation of recent trends, the ratio of vacancies to unemployment could return to its pre-pandemic level around the turn of the year. This would, nevertheless, still leave the ratio somewhat higher than its historical average.

A fall in the labour market inactivity rate has been the counterpart to a continued rise in employment rate over recent quarters, which has in turn boosted activity in the economy (Key judgement 1). According to the current vintage of ONS data, the participation rate is now only 0.3 percentage points below its 2019 Q4 level. In addition to a continuation of the recent trend for students to be more active in the labour market, recent data suggest that fewer people are becoming inactive due to early retirement or because they need to look after family (Chart 2.13). The number of people who are inactive due to long-term sickness has remained elevated, however. In light of recent news, the Committee has revised up its view of the sustainable level of labour market participation. However, this has not affected its view of the overall degree of excess demand in the economy.

Although aggregate supply is expected to remain relatively weak, the headwinds to demand, including from the path of market interest rates on which the forecast is conditioned, lead to an increasing degree of economic slack emerging in the Committee’s projections after the middle of next year. Companies are expected to respond to this weakness by retaining their existing inputs, while using them less intensively and hoarding labour for a prolonged period. As a result, in the MPC’s August modal projection, the unemployment rate is projected to rise in 2024 and then increase fairly gradually thereafter such that it reaches just under 5% by 2026 Q3 (Chart 1.2). The margin of aggregate excess supply is expected to widen to 1½% of potential GDP by the end of the forecast period (Table 1.A). Both aggregate spare capacity and unemployment increase by somewhat more in the Committee’s latest projections than in the May Report, reflecting the weaker path of GDP (Key judgement 1).

Chart 1.2: Unemployment rate projection based on market interest rate expectations, other policy measures as announced

Footnotes

• The fan chart depicts the probability of various outcomes for LFS unemployment. It has been conditioned on Bank Rate following a path implied by market yields, but allows the Committee’s judgement on the risks around the other conditioning assumptions set out in Section 1.1, including wholesale energy prices, to affect the calibration of the fan chart skew. The coloured bands have the same interpretation as in Chart 1.1, and portray 90% of the probability distribution. The fan begins in 2023 Q2, a quarter earlier than for CPI inflation. That is because Q2 is a staff projection for the unemployment rate, based in part on data for April and May. The unemployment rate was 4.0% in the three months to May, and is projected to remain at that level in Q2 as a whole. A significant proportion of this distribution lies below Bank staff’s current estimate of the long-term equilibrium unemployment rate. There is therefore uncertainty about the precise calibration of this fan chart.

In projections conditioned on the alternative assumption of constant interest rates at 5.25% over the forecast period, the unemployment rate rises to a similar degree on average over the forecast period to the MPC’s projection conditional on market rates, as the market curve is higher than the constant rate assumption in coming quarters but then falls below it further out.

The risks around the unemployment rate projection are judged to be broadly balanced.

The labour market could remain tight for longer than assumed for a number of reasons, including the upside risks around the outlook for demand (Key judgement 1). For a given demand profile, an increase in labour hoarding could prolong the tightness in the labour market, although it may not affect the overall degree of slack in the economy. Conversely, the labour market could loosen more rapidly than assumed, again including because of any downside risks to demand. There is also uncertainty around the extent to which the number of job vacancies can continue to fall without any significant adjustment in employment.

As discussed in the February 2023 Report, it remains difficult to interpret developments in labour market participation, and the extent to which they may be having an impact on spare capacity in the economy. There is also significant uncertainty about the equilibrium rate of unemployment in the economy. Higher-than-expected wage growth after the terms of trade shock that has affected the economy suggests that the medium-term equilibrium rate is likely to be higher. This implies a stronger outlook for wage growth and inflationary pressures all else equal (Key judgement 3). There is also some evidence that the efficiency with which vacancies are matched to those seeking work has decreased over recent years, which would also push up on the equilibrium rate of unemployment. The Committee will undertake a broader review of these issues, and the overall supply capacity of the economy, in its next regular stocktake.

1.2: Key judgement 3

Second-round effects in domestic prices and wages are likely to take longer to unwind than they did to emerge. In the modal forecast conditioned on market interest rates, an increasing degree of slack in the economy and declining external cost pressures lead CPI inflation to return to the 2% target by 2025 Q2 and to fall below target in the medium term, but to a lesser degree than projected in the May Report. The Committee continues to judge that the risks are skewed to the upside, but by less than in May. Taking account of this skew, mean CPI inflation is 2.0% and 1.9% at the two and three-year horizons respectively.

Twelve-month CPI inflation remains well above the 2% target, having fallen back to 7.9% in June in line with expectations in the May Report. In 2023 Q2, CPI inflation averaged 8.4%, slightly higher than the projection in the May Report. Inflation is expected to continue to fall, to an average of 6.9% in 2023 Q3 and 4.9% in Q4 (Table 1.C). That near-term decline is expected to be accounted for by lower energy, and to a lesser degree, food and core goods price inflation.

Reflecting recent wholesale energy price developments, the direct contribution of energy prices to CPI inflation is projected to fall further and then turn more negative from October. At that point, the Ofgem price cap for household gas and electricity bills is expected to fall to slightly below £2,000 per year, compared with the comparable figure of £2,500 in October 2022 that was set by the Government’s Energy Price Guarantee. Over the second and third years of the forecast period, the direct energy contribution to inflation is expected to be generally around zero or slightly negative, based on the downward slope of wholesale futures curves.

Food price inflation has remained extremely high, falling from just under 20% in March to 17.3% in June. Based in part on evidence from the Bank’s Agents (Box C), the contribution of food prices to CPI inflation is projected to fall from around 2 percentage points in June to 1.3 percentage points in 2023 Q4. The Committee has retained its judgement from the May Report that, relative to the broader balance of demand and supply in the economy, food prices will on average boost CPI inflation by around an additional 1 percentage point in coming quarters, although this is not expected to persist further out.

Core goods CPI inflation picked up to around 6½% in 2023 Q2, even as other, potentially leading, indicators of goods prices have continued to weaken (Section 2.6). For example, annual input and output producer price inflation moderated to -2.7% and 0.1% respectively in June. Bank staff expect core consumer goods price inflation to ease gradually during the rest of this year.

Four-quarter UK-weighted world export price inflation, excluding the direct effect of oil prices, is expected to have turned negative in 2023 Q2 and to remain so over coming quarters. This reflects the indirect effects of lower energy prices, the continued unwinding of supply chain bottlenecks and weak producer price inflation. Recent weakness in Chinese tradable goods prices appears broadly consistent with such an outlook. World export price inflation is projected to be slightly positive in the second half of the forecast period, broadly unchanged from the May Report.

On the other hand, UK import prices have continued to rise over recent quarters and have been stronger than past relationships with world export prices and the sterling exchange rate would have suggested. The Committee has made a judgement to allow this unexplained strength in the level of import prices to persist over the forecast period. The continued recent appreciation of the sterling exchange rate (Section 1.1) will, however, put some downward pressure on import price inflation, and over time on CPI inflation, relative to the May Report. Overall, import prices are projected to fall by 4½% in 2023, by 3¼% in 2024 and to rise by ½% in 2025 (Table 1.D).

Services CPI inflation, developments in which are more likely to indicate persistent inflationary pressures, increased to over 7% in 2023 Q2, and is now contributing more to headline inflation than other high-level components (Chart 2.18). That probably reflects resilient demand, the strength of nominal pay growth and, to a lesser degree, non-labour input costs. Services inflation was stronger than expected in the May Report, although some of this news can be accounted for by components that have historically been less informative about underlying inflationary pressures (Section 2.6). Services price inflation is projected to remain elevated in the near term, at around 7% (Chart 2.19).

Annual private sector regular pay growth has also increased further, to 7.7% in the three months to May, materially above expectations in the May Report. On a three-month on three-month annualised basis, pay growth has risen significantly, to 9.2% in May. Recent outturns appear to have been notably stronger than a standard model of wage growth, based on productivity, short-term inflation expectations and a measure of economic slack, would have predicted.

The near-term outlook for pay growth is expected to be stronger than projected in the May Report. The annual growth rate is nonetheless projected to decline in coming quarters, to around 6% by 2023 Q4, which requires a rapid decline in three-month on three-month growth during the second half of the year. The Bank’s Agents report that pay settlements are expected to ease slightly in the second half of 2023.

The Committee noted in the minutes of its June meeting that there has been significant upside news in recent data that indicates more persistence in the inflation process and which is therefore likely to have implications for the medium-term projection for CPI inflation.

Analysis by Bank staff supports the view that there are non-linearities in the way inflation is reacting to changes in demand. In particular, there is some evidence that the response is greater, to any given increase in demand, when spare capacity is more limited to begin with. Such non-linearities might help to explain some of the recent strength in domestic inflation, given the recent pattern of excess demand. In and of themselves, however, they would not result in greater persistence of inflation. If the labour market continues to loosen, as is expected in the MPC’s central projection (Key judgement 2), equally marked effects on inflation in the other direction would be expected.

More relevant may be the potential asymmetry in the second-round effects of changes in global prices. Steep rises in global goods prices weighed heavily on UK real incomes in 2021 and much of 2022. In an effort to protect falling real incomes, whether wages or profits, employees and domestic firms have sought compensation in the form of higher nominal pay and domestic selling prices. This mechanism can also be considered as broadly equivalent to an increase in the medium-term equilibrium rate of unemployment and hence consistent with a tighter labour market and greater upward pressure on wage and price inflation. As global prices cease to rise, and in some cases reverse, this should in time reduce the corresponding pressure on domestic inflation. But, to the extent that employees and firms are still seeking to recoup lost incomes, second-round effects are likely to take longer to unwind than they did to emerge.

The current circumstances are highly unusual. As such, it is hard to be precise about the extent of this asymmetry. Nevertheless, the Committee has for this reason judged previously that, relative to a modal expectation of significant declines in domestic inflation, there were material upside risks over the medium term. The MPC now judges that some of these risks may have begun to crystallise. In its latest August modal projection, and in addition to other similar judgements in previous Reports, the Committee has made a judgement to increase the persistence of inflation in wages and domestic prices. In addition to the MPC’s judgement to boost demand further in this forecast (Key judgement 1), this pushes up on the medium-term modal CPI inflation projection materially relative to the May Report.

In the MPC’s modal projection conditioned on the higher path of market interest rates as captured in the 15-working day average to 25 July, CPI inflation declines to below the 2% target in the medium term, as an increasing degree of economic slack is expected to reduce domestic inflationary pressures, alongside a slightly negative contribution from energy prices. CPI inflation is projected to return to the 2% target by 2025 Q2, and to be 1.7% at the two-year horizon and 1.5% in three years (Table 1.C and Chart 1.3).

Compared with the May Report modal projection, CPI inflation is expected to return to the 2% target marginally less rapidly in the middle of the forecast period. CPI inflation is higher in the medium term than in May, in large part reflecting the judgements that the Committee has made in this forecast including on the persistence of inflation in wages and domestic prices.

In the MPC’s modal projection, average weekly earnings growth falls to around 2% by the end of the forecast period, as short-term inflation expectations are assumed to fall back and a margin of spare capacity is expected to open up in the labour market in the medium term. This is a broadly similar medium-term profile for earnings to that in the May Report, but is consistent with a stronger path of private sector regular unit wage cost growth (Table 1.D). This takes account of both earnings and productivity per employee, and is a more relevant measure of the labour costs affecting companies’ pricing decisions.

Chart 1.3: CPI inflation projection based on market interest rate expectations, other policy measures as announced

Footnotes

• The fan chart depicts the probability of various outcomes for CPI inflation in the future. It has been conditioned on Bank Rate following a path implied by market yields, but allows the Committee’s judgement on the risks around the other conditioning assumptions set out in Section 1.1, including wholesale energy prices, to affect the calibration of the fan chart skew. If economic circumstances identical to today’s were to prevail on 100 occasions, the MPC’s best collective judgement is that inflation in any particular quarter would lie within the darkest central band on only 30 of those occasions. The fan chart is constructed so that outturns of inflation are also expected to lie within each pair of the lighter orange areas on 30 occasions. In any particular quarter of the forecast period, inflation is therefore expected to lie somewhere within the fans on 90 out of 100 occasions. And on the remaining 10 out of 100 occasions inflation can fall anywhere outside the orange area of the fan chart. Over the forecast period, this has been depicted by the grey background. See the Box on pages 48–49 of the May 2002 Inflation Report for a fuller description of the fan chart and what it represents.

In the modal projection conditioned on the alternative assumption of constant interest rates at 5.25% over the forecast period, CPI inflation is expected to be 1.7% and 1.4% in two years’ and three years’ time respectively. These are broadly similar to the Committee’s forecasts at the same horizons conditioned on market rates, as the market curve is higher than the constant rate assumption in coming quarters but then falls below it further out.

The path for inflation beyond the near term is uncertain, and the risks around the modal projection are judged to remain skewed to the upside, but by less than in the May Report.

There remain considerable uncertainties around the pace at which CPI inflation will return sustainably to the 2% target.

In the near term, a simple mapping between producer and consumer goods prices suggests goods CPI inflation could fall faster than projected (Section 2.6). There are also risks in both directions around the near-term path of wage inflation. Some forward-looking indicators, such as the KPMG/REC UK Report on Jobs indicator, suggest wage growth could slow more sharply in the latter half of 2023 (Section 2.5). It is also possible that recent official earnings data have been boosted temporarily by one-off cost of living payments. The recent run of upside surprises on pay growth could, however, persist.

In the medium term, there remain considerable uncertainties around the Committee’s judgement that second-round effects in domestic prices and wages are likely to take longer to unwind than they did to emerge. On the one hand, these risks may be more balanced following the MPC’s decision this round to take greater account of persistent price and wage-setting pressures in its modal projection. On the other hand, it is possible that the medium-term equilibrium rate of unemployment could increase to a greater degree, owing both to resistance to past losses in real income and to more persistent labour market frictions and mismatch (Key judgement 2). All else equal, this would put greater upward pressure on pay growth and domestic inflationary pressures over the forecast period.

The pace at which CPI inflation falls back to the 2% target will also depend on inflation expectations. An upside risk to the inflation outlook is that households and firms are less confident that inflation will fall back quickly and do not factor such a decline into their wage and price-setting behaviour. Developments in more visible components of inflation, such as energy and food prices, are likely to have an important impact on inflation perceptions and expectations. Since the May Report, most indicators of household and corporate inflation expectations have tended to decline, while medium-term inflation compensation measures in financial markets have risen slightly and remain above their long-term averages. The Committee will continue to monitor measures of inflation expectations very closely and act to ensure that longer-term inflation expectations are well anchored around the 2% target.

In addition, there are upside risks around the modal projection for UK CPI inflation from international factors. There remains the possibility of more persistence in consumer price inflation in the UK’s major trading partners, for similar reasons to the risks of stronger domestic inflationary pressures at home including the tightness of labour markets, and wage and services price inflation remaining elevated for longer than expected. Geopolitical tensions also remain and could continue to cause disruption to the supply of agricultural products.

Overall, the Committee continues to judge that the risks around the modal projection for CPI inflation are skewed to the upside, primarily reflecting the possibility of more persistence in domestic wage and price-setting. This pushes up on the mean, relative to the modal, inflation projections in the forecast. Conditioned on market interest rates, mean CPI inflation is 2.0% and 1.9% at the two and three-year horizons respectively.

Relative to the May Report, the magnitude of this skew is judged to be smaller throughout the forecast period, reflecting the Committee’s decision in this forecast to bring some of the upside risks to inflation from persistence into its modal projection. As the MPC is learning about the extent of medium-term inflationary pressures from indicators of persistence, such as wage growth and services inflation, it has reduced its upward skew on inflation to a slightly greater degree in year two of the forecast period than in year three.

In the mean projection conditioned on the alternative assumption of constant interest rates at 5.25% over the forecast period, CPI inflation is expected to be 2.0% and 1.8% in two years’ and three years’ time respectively.

2: Current economic conditions

Chart 2.1: GDP growth is expected to remain positive but low, the unemployment rate is expected to rise slightly in 2023 Q3 and inflation is expected to have fallen in July

Near-term projections ^(a)

Footnotes

• Sources: ONS and Bank calculations.
• (a) The lighter diamonds show Bank staff’s projections at the time of the May 2023 Monetary Policy Report. The darker diamonds show Bank staff’s current projections. Projections for GDP growth and the unemployment rate are quarterly and show 2023 Q2 and 2023 Q3 (May projections show Q1 to Q3). Projections for CPI inflation are monthly and show July to September 2023 (May projections show April to September 2023). GDP growth and unemployment rate 2023 Q2 projections are based on official data to May, the CPI inflation figure is an outturn.

2.1: Global economy and financial markets

Global GDP is expected to remain subdued in the near term, in line with the May Report.

UK-weighted world GDP is expected to have grown by 0.5% in 2023 Q2, similar to that in Q1. That expectation is broadly in line with the May Report. Four-quarter global GDP growth in Q2 is expected to be 1.8%, lower than the average rate over 2010–19 of 2.4%. The latest indicators, such as PMI surveys of business activity, suggest that global growth is likely to remain subdued in Q3.

Headline inflation in the euro area and United States has continued to fall, primarily reflecting lower energy prices, but inflation remains above central banks’ targets…

In the euro area, HICP inflation fell to 5.3% in the flash estimate for July, and in the US, headline PCE inflation, the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, eased by 0.8 percentage points to 3.0% in June (Chart 2.2). In both regions, the slowing primarily reflects energy prices falling (orange bars in Chart 2.2). European wholesale gas prices are much lower than a year ago, though they are only a little lower than in May. The Brent crude oil price has also fallen over the past year and, at US$80 per barrel, is 5% lower than in the lead up to the May Report. In the UK, although the contribution of energy to CPI inflation has fallen, it remains positive. It is expected to fall further from July as lower wholesale gas prices feed through to the prices facing households (Section 2.6).

To a lesser extent, the contributions to inflation from food and other goods prices in the US and euro area have also declined (purple and aqua bars in Chart 2.2). Goods inflation has been on a downward trend for over a year in the US; it has slowed more recently in the euro area.

Chart 2.2: Headline inflation has been falling but remains above central banks’ targets in the UK, US and euro area

Contributions to annual consumer price inflation ^(a)

Footnotes

• Sources: Eurostat, ONS, Refinitiv Eikon from LSEG, US Bureau of Economic Analysis, US Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bank calculations.
• (a) Data are not seasonally adjusted. Energy includes fuel and household energy bills. Other goods is the difference between overall inflation and the other contributions identified on the chart, and therefore includes alcohol and tobacco. The latest data are May 2023 outturns for US PCE inflation and the associated contributions, and June 2023 outturns for all other series.

…in part reflecting the strength of services inflation.

While headline consumer price inflation has been falling, services inflation has remained strong across the UK, the US and the euro area. The contribution of services inflation to the headline rate has been consistently larger in the UK and US than in the euro area (gold bars in Chart 2.2). This may in part reflect tighter labour markets, for example the vacancy to unemployment ratios in the UK and US are further above their pre-pandemic averages than in the euro area. That has contributed to strong growth in wages, which tend to make up a large proportion of services firms’ costs.

Alongside weak Chinese domestic inflation, global inflationary pressures are expected to continue to ease.

Chinese domestic inflation has been weak in 2023, with producer price inflation falling to -5.4% in June. This weakness probably reflects lower commodity prices and some softness in demand, with China’s economic recovery having lost momentum in 2023 Q2 following the end of its zero-Covid policy. Annual growth in Chinese export prices has slowed sharply from a peak of 13% last year to -6.7% in the latest data. Taken together with slowing export prices in other regions, the level of world export prices is expected to continue to fall over the coming year (Section 1).

Many central banks have continued to tighten policy, and market-implied paths for policy rates are higher than in May.

Central banks have continued to tighten policy. In the US, the FOMC raised the target range for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points to 5.25%–5.5% at its July meeting. At its meeting ending on 27 July 2023, the ECB Governing Council raised its key policy rates by 25 basis points and the deposit facility rate now stands at 3.75%. Both central banks noted that they would continue to take a data-dependent approach to setting monetary policy. The MPC voted to increase Bank Rate by 50 basis points to 5% in June (Box B).

Market-implied expectations for policy rates in the US and euro area have risen since May (Chart 2.3). On average, the US and euro-area paths are around 60 and 25 basis points higher, respectively, than in the lead up to the May Report.

Chart 2.3: The market-implied path of UK policy rates has moved materially higher since the May Report

International forward interest rates ^(a)

Footnotes

• Sources: Bloomberg Finance L.P. and Bank calculations.
• (a) All data as of 25 July 2023. The May curves are estimated based on the 15 UK working days to 28 April 2023. The August curves are estimated using the 15 working days to 25 July 2023. Federal funds rate is the upper bound of the announced target range. ECB deposit rate is based on the date on which changes in policy rates are effective from.

Since May, the increase in UK policy rate expectations has been larger than in the US and euro area…

The rise in market-implied policy rate expectations in the UK has been much larger than in the US and euro area, with the expected path for Bank Rate on average around 130 basis points higher than in May. While some of the repricing reflects global developments, market intelligence suggests that the increase in short-term interest rates has been driven largely by UK-specific developments. That is likely to relate to the strength in the indicators of inflation persistence that the MPC have been focusing on, for example the upside news in UK services inflation and wage growth since May (Sections 2.5 and 2.6). Short-term interest rates fell back somewhat, however, following the June CPI inflation release, reflecting the downside surprise in headline and core inflation. This has left the latest path for policy rate expectations, on average, around 25 basis points below the 15-day average underlying the MPC’s projections.

Longer-term interest rates have also risen, though the increases have been smaller than in short-term rates. Since the May Report, yields on 10-year UK government bonds are 70 basis points higher, compared to around 40 and 10 basis points in the US and Germany respectively. The movements at the longer end of the UK yield curve have been driven by expected policy rates (Ramsden (2023)).

…which has driven the sterling ERI higher.

Partly reflecting the rising differential between expected policy rates in the UK compared to the US and euro area, the sterling effective exchange rate has appreciated by 4% since the May Report, and around 6% since the start of the year (Chart 2.4). Sterling has appreciated by 3% against the euro and by 4% against the US dollar since May. All else equal, a stronger exchange rate dampens activity and pushes down inflation (Section 2.3).

Chart 2.4: The sterling ERI has continued to appreciate, by 4% since May

Sterling ERI and selected bilateral exchange rates ^(a)

Footnotes

• (a) Figures in parentheses show currency trade weights in the overall sterling ERI.

2.2: Interest rates facing households and firms

Reflecting the rise in risk-free interest rates, new mortgage rates have increased sharply.

Having fallen around the end of last year, interest rates on UK owner-occupied new mortgages have risen materially since the May Report. For example, the average quoted rate on a two-year fixed-rate 75% loan to value (LTV) mortgage rose by around 75 basis points to 5.5% in June, and by a further 75 basis points in July (left panel of Chart 2.5). This rise reflects the pass-through of higher risk-free interest rates: the relevant reference rate for this product is the two-year overnight index swap (OIS) rate (purple line in the left panel of Chart 2.5), which has risen by around 150 basis points since May. Mortgage rates appear to have repriced more rapidly than in the past, perhaps reflecting the scale and speed of the increase in reference rates. The relationship between risk-free reference rates and mortgage rates is set out in Box B of the May 2023 Report.

Chart 2.5: Interest rates on fixed-rate mortgages and fixed-rate bonds have risen in line with reference rates, but instant access rates have risen by less

Average quoted rates on two-year fixed-rate mortgages, fixed-rate savings bond, instant access accounts and the respective reference rates ^(a)

Footnotes

• Sources: Bank of England, Bloomberg Finance L.P. and Bank calculations.
• (a) The Bank’s quoted rates series are weighted monthly average rates advertised by all UK banks and building societies with products meeting the specific criteria. In February 2019 the method used to calculate these data was changed. For more information, see Introduction of new Quoted Rates data – Bankstats article. Diamonds for mortgage and saving products represent averages of daily quoted rates using data to 25 July and were provisional. The final data were published on 31 July. OIS rate and Bank Rate show monthly averages and the respective diamonds show the average of daily rates to 25 July.

Quoted interest rates on buy-to-let (BTL) mortgages have also increased – a two-year 75% LTV BTL mortgage has risen by around 150 basis points to 6.2% since the May Report and by around 280 basis points over the past year. These mortgages are typically used by private landlords to finance their investments. It is likely that at least part of the increase in landlords’ borrowing costs is being passed on to renters (Section 2.3). The July 2023 Financial Stability Report sets out recent developments in the BTL market in further detail.

In the latest Credit Conditions Survey (CCS), lenders reported that the availability of secured credit to households had decreased in the three months to end-May 2023, reflecting a worsening economic outlook and tighter wholesale funding conditions. The number of products available to households has fallen recently, although this has been small compared with the fall observed last autumn. The recent decline partly reflects lenders repricing their products in response to relatively fast moves in reference rates.

Instant access deposit rates have risen by less than those on fixed-rate bonds, with deposit volumes continuing to shift towards the latter products.

Interest rates on fixed-rate bonds, a type of time deposit, have also increased in line with reference rates. However, pass-through of increases in Bank Rate to instant access savings accounts, which make up the majority of household deposits, has been limited (right panel of Chart 2.5). The average quoted rate on an instant access account has increased by around 180 basis points over the past year, compared to an increase in Bank Rate of 375 basis points. This pattern of less pass-through to instant access deposit rates compared to time deposit rates is also apparent in the euro area and the US.

Reflecting the better returns on offer, deposit volumes have continued to shift from instant access accounts to time deposits since the May Report (left panel of Chart 2.6), although in aggregate the outflows have been small compared with the overall stock of sight deposits. Outflows from sight deposits have not been matched by inflows into time deposits, so household money growth has slowed (right panel of Chart 2.6). That has contributed to slowing aggregate broad money growth; the annual rate was 0.6% in the latest data, well below the 2010–19 average of 3.9%.

Chart 2.6: Deposit volumes have been shifting from instant access accounts to time deposits. Money growth has slowed sharply

Monthly change in household deposits and annual growth rate of household and aggregate broad money ^(a)

Footnotes

• (a) Right panel shows monetary financial institutions’ sterling M4 liabilities to the household sector and aggregate M4 excluding the deposits of intermediate other financial corporations. Data are to June 2023.

The cost of borrowing for UK firms has increased since the May Report, reflecting the increase in reference rates.

Around three quarters of the stock of corporate bank debt has a variable interest rate. This means that changes in reference rates are reflected in the rates paid by companies relatively quickly. The average effective rate on new bank lending to corporates was around 45 basis points higher in June than in April, and around 60 basis points higher for SMEs. These data may not fully reflect the increase in Bank Rate in June, and so may increase a little further in the near term.

In the latest CCS, lenders expected the overall availability of credit to the corporate sector to remain unchanged in Q3. Contacts of the Bank’s Agents reported that bank credit availability remained tighter than normal as there continued to be greater lender caution when assessing new loans (Box C).

2.3: The impact of interest rates on activity

Monetary policy affects the economy through a wide range of channels (for example as set out by Mann (2023)). Interest rate rises have direct effects, for example increasing debt repayments for borrowers and increasing the incomes of net savers, potentially affecting households’ and firms’ spending choices. There are also important impacts on the broader economy. For example, asset prices tend to fall as interest rates rise. This can reduce the capacity of households and firms to take out secured loans as the value of potential collateral falls. Another channel is that rising interest rates will, all else equal, be accompanied with an appreciation in the exchange rate which can itself have a range of effects on prices, consumption and trade. There are also behavioural effects, such as shifting the timing of consumption and firms’ investment decisions. The following section provides evidence on the impact of rises in Bank Rate since the end of 2021 through some of these channels.

Interest rate rises to combat high inflation will weigh directly on consumer spending through the cash-flow impact on mortgagors, although this is only one part of the overall impact of monetary policy on economic activity.

One way in which higher interest rates can weigh on consumption is via cash-flow effects on mortgagor households. In May, Bank staff estimated that the rise in mortgage payments had reduced consumer spending by around 0.3%, with this effect expected to increase to a little over 0.5% by the end of the 2025, as many households on fixed-rate mortgages refinanced (see Chart B in Box B in the May 2023 Report). The rise in mortgage rates since then (Section 2.2) means the total effect on consumption will be higher now at closer to 0.8%. Although higher mortgage rates have very significant impacts on some households’ finances, this channel of monetary policy can be a smaller part of the overall transmission of monetary policy to the economy, compared to other channels. Indeed, monetary policy still affects activity and inflation significantly in countries, such as the US, where the scope for a cash-flow effect on mortgagor households is limited by the housing market being dominated by mortgages with fixed rates that often last for as long as 30 years.

There are a number of uncertainties surrounding these estimates of how much higher mortgage rates will weigh on consumption. One factor is the extent to which those on fixed-rate mortgages will begin to adjust their consumption before they start paying higher rates at the end of their fixed-rate period. Only around half of mortgagor households are estimated to have faced an increase in mortgage repayments since rates started to rise in late 2021. There are around four million more households who have not yet faced increased mortgage costs but will do so by the end of 2026. Most households are likely to know that their mortgage costs will rise and so may anticipate that by adjusting consumption in advance. In the Bank’s March NMG survey, the perceived impact of higher mortgage rates on their finances over the past 12 months for mortgagors with a fixed rate due to expire before the end of the year were similar to those mortgagors who have already experienced a rate rise.

A further uncertainty is the extent to which households may choose to lengthen mortgage terms in order to reduce monthly mortgage payments, and hence limit the hit to their incomes. But Bank staff estimate that in 2023 Q1 only around 15% of those households remortgaging chose to lengthen their term when refinancing (July 2023 Financial Stability Report). Moreover, the aggregate effect on mortgage repayments has been broadly offset by some households choosing to pay off their mortgage faster.

Rising interest rates increase costs for those BTL landlords who have a mortgage (Section 2.2), which could also reduce aggregate consumption. This could be via lower net income for landlords or higher housing costs for renters, if landlords are able to pass on their costs through rent increases. Private rents are rising faster than usual which is likely to reduce other forms of consumption for tenant households. The CPI measure of rents rose by 5.5% over the year to 2023 Q2, the fastest pace since 1996. The increase in the price of new lets alone, rather than the entire population of rental properties, has been even faster: the Rightmove asking rent for UK properties outside of London increased by 9.3% in the year to 2023 Q2, and by 13.7% in London, outstripping average wage growth (Section 2.5). The Bank’s Agents report that more BTL landlords have sold rental properties, which appears to be reducing their supply. On average, renting households are likely to have more precarious finances than those who are BTL owners; as Albuquerque and Green (2022) show, households who are concerned about the state of their finances change their consumption significantly more when incomes change compared to other households.

A more material impact on the economy comes through broader housing market channels…

Higher interest rates will also weigh on house prices, which can reduce consumption via a collateral channel. The UK House Price Index rose significantly during the pandemic but in the most recent data fell by 0.4% between April and May, leaving the level of prices 1.1% below its peak in November 2022 (Chart 2.7). Given elevated consumer price inflation, house prices have fallen by much more than that in real terms. More timely indicators of house prices – for example, the Nationwide and Halifax house price indices that capture prices at earlier stages of the house-buying process – have been flat in recent months. Contacts of the Bank’s Agents noted that nominal house prices were expected to fall modestly in the coming months. The latest RICS Residential Market Survey shows that price expectations over the next 12 months declined in June, reflecting the recent sharp rise in interest rate expectations (Section 2.2).

Chart 2.7: Nominal house prices have been broadly flat and indicators suggest that this will continue in the near term

House price indices ^(a)

Footnotes

• Sources: Nationwide, ONS, Refinitiv Eikon from LSEG, Rightmove.co.uk, S&P Global/Halifax and Bank calculations.
• (a) The latest data point for the ONS House Price Index is May 2023. Halifax, Nationwide and Rightmove data are advanced to reflect the respective timing of each data source in the house-buying process.

Since interest rates started to rise, there has been a slowdown in housing market transactions. Fewer transactions will reduce economic activity directly, for example through less demand for services relating to moving house, and indirectly, for example through less demand for new furniture or household appliances. Although mortgage approvals increased in May and June, they remain much lower than the average observed over most of last year, albeit not as weak as in the winter (Chart 2.8).

Chart 2.8: The number of mortgage approvals has fallen

Mortgage approvals for house purchases

Another housing market channel through which rate rises affect UK activity is via housing investment. This makes up a little over 5% of total economic activity and includes investment in existing homes. In general, higher interest rates cause demand for housing to fall and lead to a reduction in investment in new dwellings. Investment plans for new homes can be slow to adapt so this effect might happen quite slowly. However, overall housing investment has already been weak, falling by 5.5% since its peak in 2022 Q2 (Chart 2.9). That weakness is projected to continue with housing investment falling a further 10% between 2023 Q1 and 2024 Q4 (Section 1).

Chart 2.9: Housing investment is falling, which is projected to continue

Real housing investment ^(a)

Footnotes

• Sources: ONS and Bank calculations.
• (a) The last data outturn is 2023 Q1. The last data point for the forecast is 2024 Q4.

…and also through business investment.

As set out in Box B of the May 2023 Report, surveys suggest that higher interest rates are weighing on business investment. In the official data, excluding a one-off rise in business investment in 2023 Q1 which was accounted for by firms bringing forward investment plans for tax purposes (ONS (2023)), business investment has not grown since 2022 Q2. Evidence from the Decision Maker Panel (DMP) from November 2022 to January 2023 shows interest rates are expected to reduce business investment by 8% on average over the following year. That effect was concentrated in roughly a third of businesses. The rise in interest rates since then may mean that these effects have increased.

The impact of interest rates on exchange rates also affects the economy.

Increases in UK interest rates relative to other countries’ rates will, all else equal, cause the pound to appreciate. An exchange rate appreciation makes imports cheaper and exports more expensive, relative to the pre-existing prices. Cheaper imports reduce UK inflation directly, because UK households consume imported products, and indirectly, as imported goods and services are used by firms in supply chains. There are also effects on UK activity through falling net trade as UK exports become less competitive globally. Given most advanced economies have been raising rates at the same time as the UK, the pound has only appreciated since the start of 2023 (Chart 2.4). That suggests the impacts of monetary policy through this mechanism have been relatively limited to date.

2.4: UK activity

Economic growth has been slow but positive since the end of 2022.

UK GDP growth turned positive at the end of 2022, with three-month on three-month growth averaging around 0.1% since then (Chart 2.10). The latest Bank staff projection is for GDP to have grown by 0.1% in 2023 Q2, having been reduced by strikes, mostly in public services sectors, and the additional bank holiday in May. Underlying growth, which adjusts for these factors, was closer to ¼% over that period, in line with the steer from key business surveys (Chart 2.11). The easing in post-pandemic supply constraints, the extension of the Energy Price Guarantee, and the fall in energy prices have supported underlying growth.

GDP growth in 2023 Q3, is projected to rise to 0.4% (Chart 2.1), largely reflecting a bounce back from the additional bank holiday in May.

On average, indicators suggest underlying growth will continue at around ¼% in Q3. The Lloyds Business Barometer reports business confidence is above its long-term average level suggesting underlying growth could pick up. In contrast, the most recent PMI surveys suggest growth has weakened (Chart 2.11). Measures of consumer confidence have improved since the start of the year, which may reflect the ongoing strength of the labour market (Section 2.5), as well as the easing in CPI inflation, both of which boost real incomes. But the GfK survey of consumer confidence fell in July and the headline measure remains historically low.

Chart 2.10: GDP growth has been slow but positive since the end of 2022 despite falling public sector output

Contribution to three-month on three-month GDP growth ^(a)

Footnotes

• Sources: ONS and Bank calculations.
• (a) Public services includes: public administration and defence; education; and human health and social work activities. Data do not sum to the total due to rounding.

Chart 2.11: Survey measures of economic activity suggest underlying growth is likely to remain slow but positive in the near term

Survey indicators of UK output growth ^(a)

Footnotes

• Sources: S&P Global/CIPS and Bank calculations.
• (a) Measures of current monthly UK composite (services and manufacturing) output, new orders and future output. The current output and new orders series are mean and variance adjusted between 1998 and 2023; the future output series is adjusted between July 2012 and 2023. The latest data points are flash estimates for July 2023.

2.5: The labour market and wage growth

Employment and labour participation have increased.

In the three months to May, the employment rate for those aged 16–64 was 76%, the highest rate since early 2020. The number of people employed grew by 0.3% in the three months to May (Chart 2.12), in line with the projection at the time of the May 2023 Report. These data can be volatile over short periods, and there is the possibility of some additional variation in the most recent data because response rates to the Labour Force Survey have dropped over time (ONS (2023)). Timelier and less volatile measures of employment growth suggest that employment is growing at around the same rate. For example, the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) employment index points to employment growth of around 0.3%.

Chart 2.12: Indicators of employment point to growth of around ¼% on average in the near term

Indicators of three-month on three-month employment growth ^(a)

Footnotes

• Sources: Bank of England Agents, KPMG/REC/S&P Global UK Report on Jobs, Lloyds Business Barometer, ONS, S&P Global/CIPS and Bank calculations.
• (a) ONS employment growth is the change in headline employment level for people aged 16+ over the value three months earlier. The PAYE employees growth series is the three-month change in the monthly number of PAYE employees. Indicators include surveys from: the Bank’s Agents (employment intentions over the next six months); KPMG/REC/S&P Global (index of demand for staff); Lloyds Business Barometer (balance of higher staffing levels over next 12 months); and S&P Global/CIPS (PMI composite employment index). Surveys are taken from a range of sources with varying samples and questions but have been mean and variance adjusted to match the ONS employment growth series between 2000 and 2019, and are therefore shown consistent with the three-month on three-month growth rate. The final data point for ONS employment growth is the three months to May 2023.

The number of working-age people in the labour force has continued to recover since it troughed in mid-2022. This trend is a continuation of that set out in Section 2.3 of the May 2023 Report, with a smaller number of students and a higher student participation rate and, more recently, fewer people reporting retirement and looking after family or the home as the reason for being outside the labour force (Chart 2.13). However, there continues to be a marked increase in the number of people reporting being out of the labour force owing to sickness, which is now a little under half a million more than at the end of 2019. The overall net increase in the number of people in the labour force since mid-2022 suggests that some of the effects of the pandemic that reduced labour force participation are reversing (Section 3 of the February 2023 Report).

Higher labour market participation has more than offset the rise in employment such that the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4% in the three months to May. It is expected to remain around that level during the second half of 2023, hitting 4.1% in 2023 Q3, up from a forecast of 3.8% in the May 2023 Report (Chart 2.1).

Chart 2.13: Labour force participation continues to improve, although more working-age people report sickness is preventing them from working

Change in inactivity since July 2022 by reason ^(a)

Footnotes

• Sources: ONS and Bank calculations.
• (a) Changes from the three months to July 2022, based on those aged 16–64. Other reasons include: discouraged workers; those awaiting the results of a job application; have not yet started looking for work; do not need or want employment; have given an uncategorised reason; or have not given a reason. Sickness includes both those long-term and temporarily sick.

The strength in the labour market has improved the outlook for household incomes.

The rise in employment and faster-than-expected average earnings growth have increased household income growth, although it remains weak relative to historical averages. Real household incomes grew by 0.9% over the year to 2023 Q1 (Chart 2.14). The latest Bank projection is for four-quarter growth to pick up in 2023 Q2 and to average 1.4% for the rest of 2023. This is a small upward revision compared to the May forecast as nominal labour income expectations have been revised up by more than inflation forecasts (see Section 2.6). Taking a longer view, real income growth is now projected to be materially higher than was projected in November 2022. The biggest driver of this upward revision is the impact of falling energy prices and the extension of government support for energy bills (for more details of changes in the Bank’s forecast over time see Annex 2).

Chart 2.14: Real incomes are projected to rise modestly in 2023

Four-quarter real household income growth ^(a)

Footnotes

• Sources: ONS and Bank calculations.
• (a) Diamonds show Bank staff projections. The aqua diamonds show the latest projections for 2023 Q2, Q3 and Q4. Income includes non-profit institutions serving households. See footnote (q) in Table 1.D for the definition of real post-tax household income.

There are some indications that the labour market is loosening, but it remains tight.

Labour market tightness is important because it is one of the key factors that affects wage growth and domestic inflationary pressures. Tightness is not a directly observable phenomenon; it depends on the interaction of labour supply and demand and the structure of the labour market.

One important indicator of tightness, the ONS vacancies to unemployment ratio, has been falling since early to mid-2022 (the aqua line in Chart 2.15), although it remains above its 2019 Q4 level. A high number of job vacancies compared to the number of unemployed people suggests the labour market is tight. Timelier measures of job postings from Indeed and Adzuna show similar dynamics although the number of vacancies in these series has returned to closer to their pre-pandemic levels. However, these series measure the number of job adverts rather than the total number of vacant jobs, and so may be affected if businesses choose to place a single advert for multiple job openings. These series also cover less of the job market than the ONS series so are less reliable in assessing the overall level of tightness.

A composite measure of labour market tightness confirms that the labour market is loosening but remains tighter than prior to the pandemic (the orange line in Chart 2.15). This combined measure has moved in a similar way to the vacancies to unemployment ratio, although it suggests that the peak in labour market tightness was not quite as high in 2022.

One factor that could be adding to labour market tightness is a decline in the efficiency with which workers are matched to job vacancies. There is some evidence that there has been a decline in the flow of new hires compared to what would typically have been expected given the number of vacancies.

Chart 2.15: The labour market remains tight, although has loosened since mid-2022

Measures of labour market tightness ^(a)

Footnotes

• Sources: ONS and Bank calculations.
• (a) The composite non-vacancy measure is calculated as the first principal component of seven series: the short-term unemployment rate; quarterly resignations as a share of employment; the share of employed people who report wanting more hours in their current job; the number of redundancies as a share of employment; the Bank’s Agents composite company visit score for recruitment difficulty; and the rate of flows out of unemployment and inactivity into employment respectively. Quarterly series are linearly interpolated to monthly data. These measures can vary for reasons unrelated to a strict definition of labour market tightness however the first principal component is intended to capture the comovement of these series, which is likely to be similar to a measure of labour market tightness. The ONS vacancies and composite non-vacancy measure series are mean and variance adjusted using data from 2002 to 2023.

Nominal wage growth has risen further.

At 7.7% in May, annual private sector regular average weekly earnings growth was at its highest rate since the series began in 2001, after accounting for volatility during the pandemic. This was around 1 percentage point higher than expected in the May Report, while the annualised three-month on three-month growth rate was over 9% in May. As with labour market tightness, wage growth is one of the key indicators that the MPC are monitoring. This is because rapid growth could indicate more persistent domestic inflationary pressure (Section 1). There are a number of potential drivers of strong nominal wage growth, with past analysis highlighting that high inflation can itself feedback to faster wage growth (for more detail see Section 3 of the May 2023 Report).

One factor potentially affecting average weekly earnings growth since April is the increase in the National Living Wage (NLW). In 2022, 5.4% of employees were paid the minimum wage (Low Pay Commission Report 2022 (2023)). This proportion probably fell prior to the 2023 increase in NLW rates because some employers had raised pay above those rates in response to high inflation. This relatively low level of coverage, combined with the low rate of pay compared to average wages, means that the direct effect on aggregate wage growth is likely to have been limited, particularly in the context of already elevated aggregate wage growth.

Labour market tightness has played a role in elevated nominal wage growth, and there is tentative evidence that it explains some of the wide variation in pay across some sectors. In May 2023, average annual pay growth for those in the finance and business services sector was 9.0%, significantly above the 5.2% rate of growth across the wholesale, retail and hospitality sectors (Chart 2.16). The finance and professional services sector – and within that the professional and scientific sector in particular – has the highest ratio of vacancies to unemployed people in the private sector.

Chart 2.16: Wage growth varies widely by sector

Annual regular pay growth, by broad sector ^(a)

Footnotes

• (a) Pay growth is measured as the average wage level over three months compared to the corresponding period a year earlier. The data are not adjusted for pandemic-related composition effects.

Some forward-looking indicators suggest wage growth will fall back in the second half of 2023 but the outlook is particularly uncertain.

Some forward-looking indicators suggest that nominal wage growth will fall in the latter half of 2023. For example, the KPMG/REC/S&P Global UK Report on Jobs indicator of wage growth (aqua line in Chart 2.17) suggests annual wage growth is currently around its peak. The REC measure is an indication of the monthly change in wages for new hires and tends to lead changes in the official measure of annual wage growth; in the chart, the series is shifted forward 12 months to reflect the strongest correlation with the private sector regular pay growth series. A similar measure, the Indeed Wage Tracker (gold line in Chart 2.17), which measures the average annual change in the wages stated in job adverts, suggests wage growth has not fallen back for new hires. But this measure has been closest to contemporaneous private sector wage growth rather than being a reliable leading indicator.

The outlook for wage growth is particularly uncertain. The REC series has been among the best-performing indicators in predicting future wage growth over the past two decades but there are uncertainties about how accurate the current steer from the measure is. For example, changes in how frequently people move jobs might affect the relationship with the official data, although Bank staff analysis suggests that the impact of this on the current outlook is small.

Overall, the latest projection for private sector regular earnings growth is for it to fall to 6.9% in 2023 Q3 and then 6.2% in Q4. This broadly matches intelligence from the Bank’s Agents, whose contacts generally expect wage growth to fall from current levels but remain higher than usual at the end of the year at around 5% to 6%. Nonetheless, the recent pattern of upwards surprises in wages suggests that risks may lie to the upside in the near term. Given the role that the rise in headline inflation appears to have played in the increase in wage growth, the projected easing in wage growth is consistent with the projected fall in inflation (Section 2.6), which has typically affected short-term inflation expectations (Section 2.7).

Chart 2.17: Twelve-month private sector regular pay growth was 7.7% in May, but forward-looking indicators suggests growth will slow this year

Measures of annual wage growth ^(a)

Footnotes

• Sources: Indeed Hiring Lab, KPMG/REC/S&P Global UK Report on Jobs, ONS and Bank calculations.
• (a) Definitions of wage growth vary between each of the measures. Private sector regular pay growth is Bank staff’s estimate of underlying pay growth between January 2020 and November 2022 and ONS private sector regular pay growth otherwise. REC shows average starting salaries for permanent staff compared to the previous month. Pay as You Earn (PAYE) Real Time Information (RTI) shows median of employee pay growth. Indeed shows annual average job title matched pay growth for UK job vacancies. The REC index is mean-variance adjusted to ONS private sector regular pay growth over March 2001–19 and is advanced by 12 months, which coincides with the greatest correlation with private sector regular pay growth. Latest data points are June 2023 for Indeed, PAYE RTI and the REC index, and the three months to May 2023 for private sector regular pay.

2.6: Inflation

Consumer price inflation remains very high but has started to fall, largely due to household energy bills stabilising.

Twelve-month CPI inflation remains well above target, at 7.9% in June, down from the 11.1% peak in October 2022. This decline is more than accounted for by a falling contribution from fuel prices, which have declined, and electricity and gas bills, which have stabilised at a high level (Chart 2.18). The contribution from those categories to headline inflation fell from 3.9 percentage points in October to 0.4 percentage points in June. In contrast, the contribution from other goods and services rose by 0.3 percentage points.

Lower household energy prices are expected to help push CPI inflation down to around 5% in Q4.

Inflation is projected to fall further in the coming months, to 4.9% by 2023 Q4, largely reflecting falling energy bills. From October 2022, households’ gas and electricity prices were set by the Government’s Energy Price Guarantee, which meant that the typical household was paying an annualised bill equivalent to £2,500 per year. Wholesale gas prices have fallen materially since then (Chart A in Annex 2). These falls have been large enough that Ofgem’s price cap is now below the Energy Price Guarantee and so, since July 2023, the typical household has been paying an equivalent bill of around £2,000. Based on the latest energy futures prices, the Ofgem price cap is expected to fall a little further from October to around £1,900 per year. However, the rate of inflation, which is calculated as an annual comparison, falls more materially because prices in 2022 Q4 were at the Energy Price Guarantee ceiling of £2,500. This means electricity and gas prices will start to drag on overall CPI inflation, by around 1.1 percentage points in 2023 Q4. Gas prices remain volatile and so there is uncertainty around this projection.