Britons' Falling Real Wages Show Challenging Times Have Arrived
- Average earnings adjusted for inflation decline by 0.2%
- Wages under pressure despite lowest unemployment since 1975
A worker pours molten metal into casts for the manufacturing of parts of centrifugal pumps at Weir Minerals Europe Ltd., a division of Weir Group Plc, in Todmorden, U.K. on Thursday, March 3, 2016. Weir Group Plc manufactures industrial pumps to transport liquids to the mining and oil and gas industries, and Weir's strategy is to establish, then service, its installed base.
Photographer: Matthew Lloyd/BloombergIt looks like those hard times the Bank of England warned about are here already.
Even as unemployment dropped to its lowest in more than four decades last quarter, U.K. workers saw their real earnings fall for the first time in 2 1/2 years, data from the Office for National Statistics showed on Wednesday. That’s particularly problematic for a nation that has relied on buoyant consumers to keep spending, not least as it enters negotiations to leave the world’s largest trading bloc.