LONDON (Reuters) – More slack in Britain’s labour market is needed to be confident that inflation will stay at 2%, Bank of England policymaker Jonathan Haskel said on Tuesday.
“The labour market is central to the inflation aspect,” Haskel said at a seminar at City University’s Bayes Business School when asked if he now thought it possible inflation would hold at 2% rather than rise later this year.
Last month the BoE forecast inflation would fall below 2% in the second quarter of 2024, before rising towards 3% later in the year, but last week BoE Deputy Governor Dave Ramsden said he thought inflation might now stay close to 2%.
Haskel said labour market tightness – as measured by the ratio between job vacancies and unemployment – was reducing, but it was unclear if it was falling fast enough to keep inflation on target.
“Reasonable people might reasonably disagree about the risks,” Haskel said.
(Reporting by David Milliken, editing by Andy Bruce)
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