Bank of England's top expert points to hidden job market problems
Bank of England faces tough choices due to shifting work patterns and migration numbers. Chief economist **Huw Pill** explains why setting interest rates became more complex in todays economy
The Bank of Englands ability to manage interest rates faces new-found obstacles according to its chief economist Huw Pill. The mix of work-force changes and high-level migration creates hard-to-solve problems for the banks decision makers
The central bank recently dropped its rate to 4.75% (which is the second cut this year); however measuring the real job market situation became super-complex. The post-pandemic era brought big shifts in work patterns - about nine-hundred thousand working-age people stepped away from jobs since early-2020
Long-term health issues play a big part in todays work-force landscape: around 2.75m people cant work because of sickness which is way-up from pre-pandemic times. The student numbers also went up making it harder to see the real job-market picture
Migration adds another layer to this economic puzzle: last years numbers show 685‚000 people came to UK (thats three times more than before covid). The foreign-born workers count went up by 1m since late-2019 reaching 6.8m people today
Looking at other money-managers: the Euro-zone bank dropped rates three times while US did bigger cuts. Still Pill says they need to be extra-careful: “We have some challenges with the statistics at the moment“ [[Bankʼs chief economist noted]]. He announced a deep-dive study into these work-force changes to better understand whats really going on
