BUSINESS LIVE: UK wage growth maintains record pace

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BUSINESS LIVE: UK wage growth maintains record pace

The FTSE 100 will open at 8am. Among the companies with reports and trading updates today are AB Foods, Fevertree, Dowlais Group, Chemring, The Gym Group and Wickes. Read the Tuesday 12 September Business Live blog below.

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‘Gloom is starting to settle in across the employment landscape’

Sarah Coles, head of personal finance, Hargreaves Lansdown:

‘Gloom is starting to settle in across the employment landscape. We’re not seeing a deluge of job losses or redundancies, but the steady creep of bad news means that for some people, the outlook is increasingly ominous.

‘Throughout the turbulence of the last couple of years, the one thing we’ve been able to cling to was job security. And while we’re not facing sweeping job losses, it’s worth at least considering what we’d do if the tide was to turn.’

AB Foods lifts profit expectations

AB Foods has raised its full-year profit outlook for the second time in four months, driven by a strong performance from both its Primark clothing business and its food operations.

The group now expects full-year adjusted operating profit, its key profit measure, to be ‘slightly better’ than its previous expectations of ‘moderately ahead’ of last year’s earnings of £1.44billion.

David Beckham-backed online gaming group Guild Esports seals Sky TV deal

Shares in an online gaming group co-owned by David Beckham surged after it signed another deal with Sky.

Guild Esports, whose teams of video game professionals compete against rivals for money, appointed Sky Glass as its official television partner.

Sky Glass is the streaming TV service from Sky that does not require a satellite dish.

UK wage growth maintains record pace

British wages excluding bonuses were 7.8 per cent per cent higher than a year earlier in the three months to July, unchanged from the three months to June, but fresh Office for National Statistics data shows signs that Britain’s labour market is finally cooling.

The unemployment rate rose to 4.3 per cent in the three months to July from 4.2 per cent a month earlier, its highest since the three months to September 2021.

The unemployment rate is already higher than the 4.1 per cent the Bank of England had pencilled in for the third quarter as a whole, when it published its last set of forecasts in early August.

The figures will be scrutinised ahead of the BoE’s next interest rate decision, with the bank likely to be encouraged by a softening labour market but cautious of still-high wage growth.



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