Reynolds: Chinese EV decision will depend on UK interests
Business secretary Johnny Reynolds has insisted any decision to impose tariffs on Chinese EVs will be about British, not EU interests.
He told the business select committee that some were under the misapprehension that the EU wanted the UK to put tariffs on EVs because they feared the Chinese could use Britain as a “backdoor” to the bloc, circumventing trade defence measures including tariffs on EVs and quota on electric hybrid cars.
He point out that this Chinese cars exported from the UK “would not qualify” for duty free exports to the EU under the rules of origin clauses in the Brexit trade and cooperation agreement”.
He was also asked about last week’s Franco-German paper proposing that the UK would be included in the upcoming Made in Europe legislation on condition London aligned with EU trade defence measures.
But he said the “detail” of that proposal, which has yet to be adopted by the EU in any new drafting of the Industrial Accelerator Act, “has not been surfaced to the degree to which we’d be able to definitively say that that is what the ask is of the UK.”
Google Cloud outage: A summary
Time to recap…
A power outage at a Google Cloud data centre near London has caused serious failures to services today, affecting operations for several UK banks.
Problems were first detected just after 7am this morning, disrupting “multiple services” in Google’s europe-west2 region (London).
Google blamed the problem on a ‘power issue’ – just afternoon today it said this event had been mitigated. By 1pm UK time services were recovering, and at 3pm Google said services were back online for most customers, with only “a very small number” still affected.
But by that time, millions of customers had been left unable to access and send cash at banks including Lloyds, HSBC and Revolut.
Revolut said:
“We are currently experiencing a service disruption affecting multiple services. We can confirm that all our customers’ money and data are safe. We’ve been working to fix the issue since it was identified this morning and apologise to anyone affected and for any inconvenience caused.”
A spokesperson for Lloyds added:
“Our app is online and customers can log in normally, though we understand some are having issues with certain online services this morning. We are aware of similar issues affecting other organisations and are monitoring the situation closely.”
Legal proceedings were disrupted, because the video system used by defendants, lawyers and other parties to attend court hearings remotely across England and Wales which failed to work throughout the morning.
The City regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, confirmed it was in touch with Google and seeking more information about the outage.
This outage will be the first major test for the FCA and Bank of England, since the City watchdogs were handed powers to regulate Google and other rival services that have been supplying “critical” cloud services to UK financial firms this summer.
Tech experts said the outage was another reminder of the dangers of relying on a small number of technology providers for cloud services, a year after problems at Amazon Cloud caused more widespread disruption.
Related: Google cloud failure hits millions as UK courts and banks knocked offline
Google: We'll publish an analysis of what went wrong
Google add that it does not plan to provide further updates about the outage on its Service Health page – another sign that it thinks it has pretty much resolved the problem with its cloud services today.
It adds:
We will publish an analysis of this incident once we have completed our internal investigation.
We thank you for your patience while we’re working on resolving the issue.
Google: issue has been mitigated for most customers
Newsflash: Google has declared that it has won, pretty much, its battle against today’s tech outage at its London-based cloud computing systems.
In an updated status message, Google says:
Multiple services were experiencing issues in the europe-west2 region.
The shift to the past tense is significant – until now, the messages said that services “are” experiencing issues.
Google then declares that all but a few customers have now been helped, saying:
The issue with impacted GCP products has been mitigated for most of the customers and it is believed to be affecting currently a very small number of customers and our Engineering Team is working on it.
If you have questions or are impacted, please open a case with the Support Team and we will work with you until this issue is resolved.
Royal Mail has said it was aware of the issues caused to its services by the Google Cloud outage, and added that there was no effect on letter and parcel deliveries.
Not that those deliveries are always good enough!
Businesss secretary Johnny Reynolds has said he has summoned Royal Mail bosses in for talks to discuss changes to improve the services, my colleague Lisa O’Carroll reports.
He told a parliamentary business committee that the Royal Mail is not delivering “the level of service people expect”.
Royal Mail have not met their first or second class standards for almost 10 years, the committee heard.
Reynolds said the government had negotiated the take over by Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský last year which included a curb on dividends “until performance improved”.
“I know for parliamentarians this in oral questions on Thursday and other correspondence with members of Parliament that it is one of the most significant issues they’re facing,” Reynolds told the committee.
He said the government “recognised the need for regulatory reform” but Ofcom was taking a lead at the moment on this subject.
“I am going to have Royal Mail and the unions in for a conversation about this. I need to respond to what MPs are being told.
“Royal Mail is a really important institution and business, and I know it has significant ramifications when it’s not hitting the levels of service. And I can promise you, chair, whether it’s work with Ofcom, whether it’s work with, with, you know, any part, any key player, any stakeholder in this, we will do what we can to make sure Royal Mail is the service it needs to be.”
Lloyds: expect services to get back to normal soon
Lloyds Banking Group, which includes Halifax, is hopeful that services will be restored soon.
A spokesperson for Lloyds tells us:
“We understand the root issues have been resolved, so we expect to all our services back to normal soon.”
UK regulators want answers from Google about Cloud outage
The Financial Conduct Authority and Bank of England are pushing Google for details of today’s cloud services outage, as they face their first major test as new regulators of “critical” tech suppliers to UK banks.
Both the FCA and Bank of England were handed powers in July to start directly overseeing the local arms of Google Cloud and three other Silicon Valley rivals - Amazon Web Services, Oracle and Microsoft – after being designated as critical third parties by the UK government, as their services become a crucial part of increasingly digital banking services.
A spokesperson for the FCA said they were in touch with Google and seeking more information about the outage. The Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority is also understood to be speaking with the tech firm about the service outage which began this morning (details start here).
The watchdogs are in charge of ensuring that the cloud providers are resilient and actively reducing the risk of cyber-attacks and major outages like the one experienced today, which has disrupted services for millions of people and businesses across the UK.
For its part, Google is meant to prove it is carrying out proper stress testing, including how it would respond to imagined emergency scenarios that would put their operations under severe strain. They’re also meant to have reported any major incidents, including this power outages, to the two regulators (though it’s unclear in what time frame).
Updated
Low-paid workers and hospitality firms face disruption
The failure of banking apps due to the Google Cloud outage could disproportionately affect those most struggling with the cost of living, argues audit, tax and business advisory firm Blick Rothenberg.
Blick Rothenberg partner Andrew Sanford explains:
“Weekly or fortnightly paid employees, often those on lower wages, may have found that they are unable to access their funds on the very day where they have payments or commitments to make.”
“The hospitality sector will also be disproportionately impacted by those people affected by the outage with no means of making payment, who simply do not go the pub or restaurant.”
Affected companies coming back online again
There are signs that the companies affected by Google’s outage are getting online again.
Emma, the personal finance, budgeting, and money management app which was taken down by the Google Cloud outage (see 10.11am), has posted on X that it is operating again.
Emma says:
We’re back ✅ Emma is up and running again after this morning’s Google Cloud power outage in London. Your data and money were safe throughout. Some balances may take a little while to refresh. Thanks for your patience 💜
Google: We are seeing the recovery of services for most workloads
Newsflash: Google says service are being restored in its London-based cloud region after today’s outage.
The company says:
“We are seeing the recovery of services for most workloads in europe-west2.”
This isn’t the end of the story, though – Google are promising another update by 3pm UK time.
Updated
Google added that they will provide an update by 06:00 PDT (2pm BST) with “current details” of the situation.
Google: The power event is mitigated
Newsflash: Google says the ‘power event’ which affected its London-based cloud computing operating and caused widepread disruption to services in the UK has been ‘mitigated’.
In a new statement on its Service Health page, Google reports seeing signs that services are being restored.
It says:
A power event caused an outage within europe-west2-b zone. The power event is mitigated. We are seeing the recovery of services and are prioritizing the recovery of existing workloads.Customers may not be able to yet create new workloads.
Full recovery of existing workloads should be completed, tentatively by Tuesday, 2026-10-20 06:00 [Pacific Daylight Time].
[CORRECTED: 6am PDT is 2pm UK time.]
Updated
The Google Cloud outage could result in some companies losing sales, and they might struggle to get much compensation, suggests Ryan Gracey, partner at law firm Gordons.
“Many businesses will be discovering today that their cloud contracts protect the supplier far more than they protect the customer.
“When a provider goes down, the usual remedy is a modest credit against future fees. That is small consolation set against lost revenue, frustrated customers and damage to reputation.
“Liability for those wider losses is typically capped or excluded altogether. The real exposure sits in the gap between how heavily a business depends on its provider and how little its contract actually guarantees. For banks, the stakes are higher still. Regulators expect them to keep essential services running even when a key supplier fails.
“Outsourcing a service does not mean outsourcing responsibility for it. Boards should be asking, not just what their contracts promise, but whether the business could keep going if its provider went dark for a day.”
Google: power event disrupted our Cloud services
Google are blaming a ‘power event’ for the disruption at its London-based Cloud computing operations today.
In an update on its status page, Google says:
Due to a power event we had suffered an outage within europe-west2-b zone. The power event is mitigated. Partial mitigation to infrastructure services will be observed within the next 30 minutes and the remaining services will be mitigated there after.
PA: Court hearings delayed as nationwide video system goes down
The video system used by courts across England and Wales went down on Tuesday in an issue believed to be linked to the wider Google outage, the Press Association report.
The Cloud Video Platform (CVP), which is used by defendants, lawyers and other parties to attend court hearings remotely, was not functioning throughout the morning.
Users expecting to attend court on video link were met with a message saying there was an internal server error.
The issue is expected to have left many hearings across the country delayed or unable to go ahead as the system is often used for defendants who are in custody to attend court.
The judge in the Russell Brand trial, Mr Justice Bennathan, decided to press on with proceedings at Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday morning despite the link being broken.
Some journalists who would have been watching online were squeezed into extra seats in court, but many were not able to follow the proceedings as the fourth complainant started her evidence.
Staff at the court said there was a national outage and did not know when it would be resolved.
It is understood to be linked to an outage affecting Google’s Cloud network, which affected businesses including online bank Revolut, delivery service DPD and Royal Mail.
The nature of cloud ecosystems mean that a problem in one region can ripple out and cause widesread disruption.
Dr Amro Al-Said Ahmad, lecturer in computer science at Keele University, explains:
“Another outage, another reminder of the fragility of cloud infrastructure. Google Cloud is currently experiencing a major incident affecting the europe-west2 (London) region, with elevated errors and intermittent network failures impacting more than 38 cloud-native services across key categories including Compute & Containers, Storage & Databases, Analytics & Data Processing, Networking & Connectivity, Messaging & Streaming, Caching & Memory Services, and AI/Platform Services.
“Google Engineers are actively investigating the issue and testing mitigations, including moving impacted workloads to alternative regions where feasible. The disruption has also affected several major organisations and financial institutions that rely on the affected region.
“More importantly, the incident highlights the dependency effect of modern cloud ecosystems. When a core cloud region experiences failures, the impact extends far beyond the directly affected services. Applications, APIs, databases, authentication systems, payment platforms, analytics pipelines, and third-party SaaS products that depend on those services can all experience cascading failures.
“A problem in a single cloud region can therefore propagate through an entire digital supply chain, affecting organisations that are several layers removed from the original outage. While this is a regional outage centred on europe-west2, the breadth of affected services highlights a key cloud engineering lesson: resilience is not achieved by simply moving to the cloud. True resilience requires designing for regional failures through multi-region deployments, workload portability, and tested disaster recovery procedures.”
A Lloyds spokesperson has confirmed the bank (which includes Halifax) has experienced problems today:
“Our app is online and customers can log in normally, though we understand some are having issues with certain online services this morning. We are aware of similar issues affecting other organisations and are monitoring the situation closely.”
Google’s latest update on its Cloud outage reiterates what we knew already.
It says:
We apologize to all who are affected by the disruption.
Symptoms
Multiple Google Cloud services are experiencing elevated errors and intermittent network failures in europe-west2 region.
Note: Looker Studio is not impacted by this outage.
Workaround
If feasible, the impacted customer may try to migrate their workload impacted to another available location (zone or region).
Updated
ESET: cloud services are a 'huge point of failure'
Today’s Google Cloud outage comes exactly 12 months after rival Amazon suffered serious disruption at its cloud computing arm.
Now, as then, it’s a reminder of the perils of relying on a small number of companies for operating the global internet, especially as more and more services have been moved onto the cloud.
Jake Moore, Global Cybersecurity Adviser at ESET, Europe’s leading cybersecurity company:
“Today’s outages highlight just how much dependence we put on a handful of technology giants to keep our digital lives running. With only a small number of major cloud providers to choose from, the knock-on effects can be catastrophic if something goes wrong and can leave millions of people unable to use everyday services.
“Cloud services are a huge point of failure and will always be a potential weakness in digital infrastructures. They could even become a potential target on such services by cybercriminals. Businesses therefore need to plan for when these services go down and have strict contingencies in place for this unfortunate inevitable event.”
We’re expecting another update from Google by noon UK time (4am PDT).
Updated
Update: Cloudflare 'not impacted' by incident
Other companies affected by the Google Cloud outage include Royal Mail, DPD, BT and Screwfix (on top of the companies we’ve already covered), according to tech news site The Register.
El Reg (as they’re affectionately known) adds:
Techies on Reddit said the interruption was having a cascading affect on multiple suppliers. One said: “oh man the classic one zone takes a nap and your non-HA service is in it.”
“Loads of stuff seems to be down, DNS somewhere,” mused another.
Update: Cloudflare has denied a report that it was affected by the outage.
Cloudflare’s CIO Sam Rhea says:
“The incident has not caused impact to Cloudflare.”
Updated
Some Halifax customers are finding they cannot log into their banking appp right now – and receive this error message instead:
Halifax: some customers are having issues with our app and online
Halifax, which is part of Lloyds Banking Group, has confirmed some customers are having problems today.
Posting on X, Halifax says:
We’re aware some customers are having issues with our app and online. We’re sorry about this and are working hard to fix it. If you need to you can still call us. We’ll let you know as soon as it’s back to normal.
Updated
There are also reports that Rightmove has been affected by the Google Cloud outage.
Rightmove certainly uses Google Cloud for its new artificial intelligence services – including a new AI-powered Comparison Assistant launched earlier this month.
It has also been developing a AI-powered conversational property search “in close collaboration with Google Cloud”.
NewsThump, the satire and spoof news website, has been thumped by the Google Cloud outage – its site currently won’t load.
It says:
NewsThump has been down since 7am due to a major outage in the Google Cloud infrastructure (no, we don’t really understand that either). We have satirists chomping at the bit, and jokes to post as soon as everything comes back online...
Google suggests a workaround
Google has updated its advice to those affected by its service disruption, with a possible workaround.
It says:
If feasible, the impacted customer may try to migrate their workload impacted to another available location (zone or region).
“A person familiar with the matter” has told Reuters that Revolut’s service outage was related to the Google Cloud service disruption (as we speculated a little while ago…)
Key event
There are also some reports of problems with other UK financial services firms today – perhaps a sign that the Google Cloud outage is causing wider problems.
These chart from DownDetector show a rise in problems being reported by users of HSBC and Lloyds Banking Group this morning:
The service disruption at Google Cloud began just after 7am this morning UK time, or 23:08pm Pacific Daylight Time last night.
The disruption is focused at Google’s europe-west2 region, which is London. Other sites, such as Paris and Frankfurt, are not reporting problems.
Updated
Ticket sales are also being disrupted by the Google Cloud outage, according to Hertfordshire-based football club Hitchin Town.
Hitchin Town (known as the Canaries) in soccer circles, say:
There is currently a Europe wide issue with Google Cloud which hosts our ticketing site with @KaizenTicketing
As a result our ticketing site is currently not available. We will keep you updated this morning as Kaizen work with Google’s engineers to resolve this.
Google apologize over Cloud outage
Google say they “apologize to all who are affected by the disruption” at its Cloud division in Europe today.
The tech giant says it will provide an update by 02:30 PDT, which is 10.30am BST – or in 15 minutes time….
Updated
Emma app brought down by Google Cloud outage
Personal finance, budgeting, and money management app Emma says it has been taken down by the problems at Google Cloud.
Emma says:
Emma is currently down due to a Google Cloud outage affecting services in London since 7am. This is a technical outage, not a security issue. We’re monitoring closely and will update here as soon as the app is back. Sorry for the disruption 🙏
Revolut customers hit with outage
Revolut, the online banking services, reports that it is experiencing a service disruption affecting multiple services.
Revolut says its services are currently ‘partly unavailable’, with problems affecting its sign up, sign in, card payments, transfers, ATM withdrawals and cryptocurrency services, for example.
Revolut says:
We are currently experiencing a service disruption affecting multiple services. We can confirm that all our customers’ money and data are safe. We’ve been working to fix the issue since it was identified this morning and apologise to anyone affected and for any inconvenience caused.
This outage could well be due to the problems at Google today (see previous post) – the two companies have a strategic partnership, under which Revolut uses Google Cloud’s scalable infrastructure to operate its services.
Updated
Google Cloud hit by errors and network failures.
Newsflash: Google’s cloud computing services have been hit by technical problems in Europe.
Google reports that “multiple Google Cloud services are experiencing elevated errors and intermittent network failures in europe-west2 region”, and it does not currently have a work around.
The europe-west2 region is London, according to Google’s Service table.
It says:
Incident affecting BigQuery Data Transfer Service, Cloud Filestore, Cloud Run, Google App Engine, Google Cloud Dataflow, Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, Google Cloud Pub/Sub, Google Cloud Storage, Google Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Looker (Google Cloud core), Managed Airflow, Managed Service for Apache Kafka, Persistent Disk, Storage Transfer Service
The problem is hurting some fintech companies, and banks.
Updated
South Korean data centre firm Elice plunges in trading debut
Over in Seoul, shares of data-center infrastructure company Elice plunged as it made its trading debut.
Elice’s hopes of making a big splash on the stock market turned into a belly flop, as its shares ended its first day of trading down 32% – raising fears that the AI boom might be faltering.
According to Bloomberg data, this is the worst-ever opening day for a sizable Korean IPO.
Bloomberg reports:
“Elice’s debut comes at a time when sentiment toward AI infrastructure companies has weakened, particularly in the US,” said Albert Yong, managing partner and chief investment officer at Petra Capital Management. “Sentiment toward AI infrastructure has been highly volatile and often disconnected from underlying fundamentals.”
Elice describes itself as an “AI Full Stack Company”, providing AI education, cloud infrastructure, and other services which “organizations need for AI transformation”.
It’s already been a turbulent year for the Korean stock market. The KOSPI index doubled in value in the first half of 2026, but then fell by almost a fifth in July-September.
Updated
Shares have dipped in London, and across Europe, in early trading as the political crisis in France worries investors.
The FTSE 100 share index has dropped by 45 points, or 0.42%, to 10,719 points, adding to yesterday’s losses.
That has helped to pull the pan-European Stoxx 600 index down by 0.4%. France’s CAC index has lost 0.3% while Germany’s DAX is down 0.7%.
Investors remain concerned that the protests that rocked France last weekend will hamper efforts to cut spending.
Related: ‘It looks like a war zone’: France reels as looting continues for second night
Capital Economics told clients:
France appears to be heading for a fiscal crisis which could lead to contagion and potentially a recession in the euro-zone. However, several factors mean the contagion risks to other countries’ bond markets and economies are lower than they were during the sovereign debt crisis of the early 2010s.
McFadden: UK's employment rate now the third highest in the G7
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Pat McFadden says:
“Today’s figures show the resilience of our labour market with unemployment falling and the UK’s employment rate now the third highest in the G7, despite a backdrop of global uncertainty.
“But too many young people still find themselves locked out of employment. That’s why are working with industry, to bring young people back into the labour market and prevent them from drifting into the welfare system.
“The hospitality and retail sectors have committed to 200,000 jobs for young people not in education, work or training through this partnership, to give them the opportunities they need to get started and build a successful career.”
Pound jumps after UK jobs report
The pound has rallied after Britain’s unemployment rate fell unexpectedly this morning to 4.7%.
Sterling has gained half a cent against the US dollar to $1.3352, as the City welcomes the news that employment rose in the last quarter.
The pound is also up 0.2% against the euro to €1.1888, close to the 17-month high touched yesterday.
Traders may be concluding that a stronger-than-expected jobs market will give the Bank of England confidence to raise interest rates to fight inflation.
Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG says sterling is “rampant” after the UK employment data.
“This data has caught the market on the hop, with traders scrambling to respond and boost exposure to the pound. Good news has been a touch more prevalent for the UK of late, which is just the kind of framing the government needs heading into the budget, though signs of more resilience in the labour market do of course mean the BoE has more room to respond to higher inflation.”
The money markets indicate there’s a 95.5% chance that the Bank raises interest raatest at its next meeting in November, to 4%. Three further rate rises are expected in 2027.
Here’s Stephen Evans, chief executive at Learning and Work Institute (L&W), on the situation in the UK jobs market:
“The labour market remains relatively flat overall. This resilience in the face of headwinds driven by global events is welcome. But underlying problems remain, with around one million young people not in education, employment or training and overall employment more than two million short of the Government’s 80% employment rate target.
To fix those challenges we need to change the benefit system so it offers active help to all who need it, but also make it easier for employers to create jobs. “
Related: Cut benefits to fund work support for young people, says Neet review author Alan Milburn
Another interesting line in today’s jobs report is that the number of workers on company payrolls has risen.
Payrolls increased by 13,000 in September, to around 30.3m.
But that’s still 66,000 lower than a year ago.
UK suffering 'jobs drought' as vacancies drop
The government should not be complacent about the state of the labour market ahead of next week’s budget, warns Ben Harrison, director of the Work Foundation at Lancaster University:
Harrison explains:
The UK is still amidst a jobs drought with vacancies at their lowest for over 12 years outside of the pandemic.
“In particular, there are now 715,000 young people aged 16–24 unemployed, down by 28,000 on the quarter. Nevertheless, the number of young people out of work remains 54,000 higher than 12 months ago.
“For too many young people there are simply not enough suitable jobs available to them. Overall, vacancies have fallen to 691,000 – the lowest level outside the pandemic since 2014 – while Work Foundation research shows that adverts for starter jobs have almost halved over the past.
Here’s ONS deputy director of labour market statistics, David Freeman, on today’s jobs data:
“While the labour market remains broadly flat in 2026, data from the latest quarter shows the employment rate edging up and a small drop in unemployment. The number of workers on payroll remains slightly down over the same period, though data for the most recent month suggests that might be starting to level off.
“The number of vacancies has seen its largest fall since the start of the year, concentrated mainly within smaller businesses, which cite increased labour costs as a key factor.
“Regular wage growth remained relatively stable, though total pay – including bonuses – has eased to its lowest rate in nearly six years.”
Public sector pay outpaces private sector, but....
Pay continued to rise faster in the public sector than in the private sector, today’s labour market report shows.
Regular annual growth was 3.0% for the private sector and 6.3% for the public sector.
But as the ONS points out, public sector pay growth continues to be affected by variations in the timings of pay awards this year – largely to do with pay deals in the NHS.
Updated
Real wage growth remains weak
Once you account for inflation, UK real wage growth remained below 1% last month.
Annual real regular pay growth was broadly unchanged at 0.8% in June to August, the ONS reports, based on the CPI inflation measure.
Annual real total pay growth (using CPI) was 0.9% in June to August 2026, a slight decrease.
A mixed picture on wage growth
Regular pay growth rose in the last quarter, today’s labour market report shows.
But once you account for bonuses, wage growth slowed.
The ONS reports that regulator pay grew by 3.7% in the June-August quarter, up from 3.6% a month ago.
But growth in total pay (including bonuses) was 3.7% in June to August 2026, down from 3.9% in May-July.
Construction led fall in vacancies
Vacancies fell particularly sharply across the construction sector, suggesting Britain’s builders cut back on hiring last summer.
The ONS reports:
Vacancy estimates decreased on the quarter, with early estimates for July to September 2026 suggesting a decrease of 21,000 (2.9%) vacancies to 691,000, compared with April to June 2026; this is the first time the total has been below 700,000 since February to April 2021.
Vacancy estimates decreased in 14 of the 18 industry sectors, compared with April to June 2026; the largest industry decrease was in construction (down 7,000 vacancies).
Vacancy estimates decreased in 4 of the 5 employment size bands, compared with April to June 2026; the largest decrease was for businesses with 1 to 9 employees (down 21,000 vacancies).
Introduction: UK unemployment rate falls in pre-budget boost
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.
The UK unemployment rate has fallen, in a pre-budget boost to chancellor John Healey, but the number of vacancies available for workers continues to shrink.
The latest data on the UK labour market, just released, shows that the UK unemployment rate fell to 4.7% in June to August, down from 4.9% a month ago.
That’s better than expected – City economists had forecast a rise to 5%.
In its final snapshot of Britain’s jobs market ahead of the budget in two week’s time, the Office for National Statistics reports that employment rose, by 102,000 jobs, to 34.577m in the last quarter.
The number of people unemployed fell by 47,000 in the quarter to 1.712m, and there was a small (16,000) drop in the number of people ‘economically inactive’, to 9.091m.
But worryingly, the number of vacancies has seen its largest fall since the start of the year, falling by 21,000 in the last quarter.
That pulled the number of vacancies down to 691,000 in July to September, down from over 1.2m in early 2022. This is the first time the total has been below 700,000 since February to April 2021.
The ONS says:
This is mainly from smaller firms, who continue to suggest that they may not be recruiting because of increased labour costs.
That’s a reference to the higher employer National Insurance Contributions (NICs) brought in by Healey’s predecessor, Rachel Reeves, and the rise in the minimum wage, which have made it costlier to hire staff.
More to follow….
The agenda
7am BST: UK labour market data
10am BST: ZEW index of eurozone economic sentiment
10am BST: Eurozone construction output for August
2.30pm BST: BIST Committee questions Secretary of State Jonathan Reynolds
Updated
