Barclays with the note:
Tuesday’s labour market report points to some signs of easing labour market conditions as the inactivity rate fell, unemployment increased, and the vacancies-to-unemployment ratio improved. However, the moves may be too small to call a material reversal, and wage growth continues to accelerate.
The labour market report showed some small signs of reversing the trends of previous months, potentially pointing to a slightly looser labour market. In the three months to October, unemployment rose 10bp to 3.7% (Barclays fcst: 3.6%, Bloomberg consensus: 3.7%) while the number of inactive workers fell slightly. The drop in inactivity was driven by 50-64 year olds and by the long-term sick – the same two cohorts that have driven increases over the last few months. Total employment also edged slightly higher but this was accompanied by a continued up-tick in redundancies (Figure 10).
