In other words, a 25 basis point tightening would still leave the UK monetary policy stance significantly more accommodative than a year ago. Conclusion  So where does this leave the balance of arguments? Having weighed the evidence, I think that the balance of risks associated with tightening “too early”, on the one hand, and “too late”, on the other, has swung materially towards the latter in the past six to nine months. The risks of tightening “too early” have shrunk as growth and, to lesser extent, inflation have shown greater resilience than expected. And if policy tightened “too late”, this could result in a much steeper path of rate rises later on, contrary to the MPC’s collective expectation that Bank Rate would increase ‘at a gradual pace and to a limited extent’. 25  As the balance point between these risks has shifted over the past 9 months, that has left me judging that a partial withdrawal of the additional policy insurance the MPC put in place last year would be prudent relatively soon, provided the data come in broadly as expected in the period ahead. Certainly, I think such a tightening is likely to be needed well ahead of current market expectations. How soon is “relatively soon”? I considered the case for a rate rise at the MPC’s June meeting. I felt then there were strong grounds for holding back until later in the year, for two reasons. First, despite upwards pressure on inflation, there are still few signs of higher wage growth.
Chart 6: UK self-employment Per cent of total employment 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1855  1870  1885  1900  1915  1930  1945  1960  1975  1990  2005  Sources: ONS, Thomas and Dimsdale (2017) and Bank of England calculations. 19  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  19  Chart 7: ‘Zero hours’ contracts  Per cent of employment  3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0  2000 Q4 2002 Q4 2004 Q4 2006 Q4 2008 Q4 2010 Q4 2012 Q4 2014 Q4 2016 Q4 Sources: ONS Labour Force Survey and Bank of England calculations. Chart 8: Frequency of terms in job postings  Sources: Reed and Bank of England calculations. Notes: Chart shows the share of job postings in a data set of job vacancies posted online in the UK which include the terms ‘self-employed’, ‘flexible hours’ and ‘contractor’. 20  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  20  Chart 9: Distribution of offered wage by occupation, with and without the term ‘self-employment’ in the job advert  Sources: Reed and Bank of England calculations. Notes: ‘SOC code’ refers to standard occupational classification code. The area labelled ‘True’ shows the distribution of offered wages for job adverts which include the term ‘self-employment’, and the area labelled ‘False’ shows the distribution for adverts which do not. The data are drawn from a cross-section of online job vacancies. Distributions are constructed using data covering the period 2008-2016.