I also want to take this opportunity to recognise and appreciate your continuing coverage of the Bank’s events, including joining us this morning for this economic briefing, notwithstanding the COVID-19 pandemic constraints and related challenges. Communication is increasingly becoming key in our policy “tool-kit”, being a means to meet public expectations of a transparent and accountable central bank as well as anchoring policy credibility.
Even with the unemployment rate near its lowest point in 40 years, underlying wage growth is running at around 2.3 per cent. This is a backward-looking indicator, and we project wage growth to pick up in the year ahead. Companies that we spoke to in our autumn Business Outlook Survey (BOS) expect wage gains to pick up over the coming quarters.