Despite the increase in unemployment, there was better news from a rise in the number of people in work. The size of the workforce continued to grow, rising by 88,000 to stand at 32.15 million in the three months to December. This was driven by an increase in the numbers of people born in the UK, while there was a drop in workers from eastern Europe. The ONS said there was an increase in the number of full-time employees, and decrease in part-time and self-employed work. John Hawksworth, a chief economist at PwC, said the reading on the labour market was positive because it showed more previously inactive people seeking work, some of them finding jobs and others still searching and so being classified as unemployed.
Focus of the Thursday's session was on UK GDP data. UK gross domestic product (GDP) in volume terms was estimated to have increased by 0.4% between Quarter 3 (July to Sept) and Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2017; this is a 0.1 percentage point revision down from the preliminary estimate of GDP, in part reflecting a small downward revision to the estimated output of the production industries. Growth in the latest quarter was driven by business services and finance within the services sector, there was, though, a small downward revision to services since the preliminary estimate of GDP, but this does not impact on services quarterly growth to one decimal place.
This week markets will be looking at:
Manufacturing PMI (Thursday 10:30)
Construction PMI (Friday 10:30)
