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Business Today
Business live
UK unemployment rises to 4.3%, but real wages are growing again
Live  
UK unemployment rises to 4.3%, but real wages are growing again
Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as total pay jumps by 8.5% in the last year – ahead of inflation
Headlines
Jeremy Hunt  
High UK inflation makes autumn tax cuts unlikely, says chancellor
High UK inflation makes autumn tax cuts unlikely, says chancellor
Wilko  
All 400 shops to close with loss of more than 12,000 jobs
Music  
Ban ticket resellers from making profit in UK, say musicians’ managers
Energy  
Ukraine regains control of strategic Black Sea oil rigs, intelligence service says
Environment  
World Bank spent billions of dollars backing fossil fuels in 2022, study finds
John Lewis  
Boss calls for royal commission to save high streets
Germany  
Economy ‘will shrink this year as part of eurozone slowdown’
Construction  
UK building group Vistry to focus solely on social housing
Energy  
Heat pumps twice as efficient as fossil fuel systems in cold weather, study finds
Car industry  
BMW announces £600m package to save Oxford Mini plant
Politics  
Sunak refuses to make pensions triple lock election commitment
Rising borrowing costs  
UK firms ‘slow output and rein in hiring’
Today's agenda
UK unemployment has risen, as more people lost their jobs over the summer.

The latest labour market report, just released, shows that UK unemployment rose by 159,000 in the last quarter, taking the jobless total up to 1.464m.

The increase in unemployment was largely driven by people unemployed for up to 12 months.

That lifted the jobless rate to 4.3% in the May-July quarter, up from 4.2% a month ago, and 3.8% in the previous quarter.

Employment fell, due to a drop in full-time self-employed workers, pulling the employment rate down to 75.5% in May to July 2023, 0.5 percentage points lower than February to April 2023.

But there’s better news on pay this morning – total pay, including bonuses, rose by 8.5% per year in the May-July quarter, helped by one-off bonus payments to NHS and Civil Service workers this summer.

That could be significant for millions of pensioners, as this earnings figure is used to set the rise in the state pension the following April.

Regular pay (which excludes bonuses) grew by 7.8%, the same as last month – and the highest since comparable records began in 2001.

CPI inflation dropped to 6.8% in July, so this shows that wages are rising faster than prices again, after a long squeeze due to the surge in inflation last year.

Excellent news for households, but it might add to the pressure on the Bank of England to keep raising interest rates to fight inflationary pressures.

Today is the last day of trading at 24 Wilko stores across the UK, after the retail chain fell into administration.

Stores including those in Aldershot, Cardiff, Falmouth, Liverpool and Stafford are among those shutting today, with a further 28 closing on Thursday.

Yesterday, unions reported that all Wilko’s 400-plus stores are to close with the loss of more than 12,000 jobs, after talks with potential buyers failed to reach a rescue deal.

We’ll find out this morning if grocery inflation eased in the past few weeks, when Kantar releases its latest data on the supermarket sector.

The agenda
• 7am BST: UK labour market report
• 8am BST: Kantar releases grocery price inflation report
• 9am BST: Opec’s monthly oil market report
• 10.15am BST: UK Treasury committee hold hearing with Sarah Breeden, deputy governor of financial stability at the Bank of England

We’ll be tracking all the main events throughout the day ...
Nils Pratley on finance
Mini boost from BMW doesn’t mean UK is in global car industry’s fast lane
Mini boost from BMW doesn’t mean UK is in global car industry’s fast lane
Opinion
Will the dollar keep its global dominance? The US needs to get its act together
Will the dollar keep its global dominance? The US needs to get its act together
Media
‘You may have been poisoned’  
How an independent Russian journalist became a target
How an independent Russian journalist became a target
Law  
Ministers urged not to shelve plans to outlaw oppressive lawsuits
Spotlight
The student battling fast fashion’s ‘hypocritical’ scholarships
‘Shein is targeting colleges’  
The student battling fast fashion’s ‘hypocritical’ scholarships
Lexy Silverstein, a student at Los Angeles’s FIDM, takes a stand against fast-fashion brand ‘greenwashing’ with partnership
Popular on business
Former rubbish dump in Essex becomes UK’s third largest solar farm
Former rubbish dump in Essex becomes UK’s third largest solar farm
Post-Brexit shift in immigration may mean higher wages and more self-sufficient UK economy
Jeremy Hunt says he mustn’t pump extra money into people’s pockets; BoE’s Mann says better to over-tighten interest rates – as it happened
Why go to college when you could be a plumber?
Now even the Bank of England admits greedflation is a thing
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