United Kingdom: Selected Issues

February 13, 2018

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Format: Chicago

United Kingdom: Selected Issues, (USA: International Monetary Fund, 2018) accessed September 18, 2024

Summary

This Selected Issues paper on the United Kingdom finds that the main factors behind the slowdown include weak productivity growth, labor market slack, and low inflation. Recent labor market developments in the United Kingdom appear to point to disconnect between unemployment and wages. Although the unemployment rate has fallen to a 40-year low, wage growth continues to growth at a subdued pace. The analysis in this paper suggests that this puzzle is explained by persistent weak productivity growth and well-anchored inflation expectations, as well as by greater effective labor market slack than suggested by the headline unemployment rate. Broader measures of underemployment—accounting for involuntary part-time unemployment, inactive and self-employed people seeking regular jobs—suggest that slack in the labor market was higher than implied by the unemployment rate in recent years. Persistent tightness of the labor market should prompt some firming of wage growth in the coming year, everything else equal. A mild increase in unit labor costs would help bring domestically generated inflation in line with the inflation target.

Subject: Labor, Labor markets, Production, Productivity, Self-employment, Unemployment rate, Wages

Keywords: CR, Frontier firm, Global, ISCR, Labor market, Labor market condition, Labor market slack, Labor markets, Productivity, Productivity growth, Self-employment, Unemployment rate, Wage, Wage dynamics, Wage pressure, Wages

Publication Details

Pages:

45
Volume:

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DOI:

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Issue:

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Series:

Country Report No. 2018/043
Stock No:

1GBREA2018002
ISBN:

9781484341759
ISSN:

1934-7685

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