UK jobs market data for February was released today at 7:00 am BST. Report was expected to show a similar employment increase as in previous month, an uptick in unemployment rate as well as deceleration in earnings growth.
Actual report turned out to be a negative surprise. Employment data missed expectations significantly, showing an unexpected drop of 67k, unemployment rate jumped to 4.2%, while average earnings growth stayed unchanged, and core earnings growth decelerated less then expected.
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- Employment change: -67k vs 20k expected (20k previously)
- Employment change (3month/3month): -156k vs 74k expected (-21k previously)
- Unemployment rate: 4.2% vs 4.0% expected (3.9% previously)
- Average earnings growth: 5.6% YoY vs 5.5% YoY expected (5.6% YoY previously)
- Average earnings growth ex-bonuses: 6.0% YoY vs 5.8% YoY expected (6.1% YoY previously)
UK, unemployment claims for March: 10.9k vs 17.2k expected (16.8k previously)
Markets reaction was mixed. GBP moved slightly lower at first but then jumped to almost 1.2450 before erasing all of those gains to trade little changed compared to pre-release levels.
Source: xStation5
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