• Prior 4.4%
• Employment change 97k vs 3k expected
• Prior 19k
• Average weekly earnings +4.5% vs +4.6% 3m/y expected
• Prior +5.7%
• Average weekly earnings (ex bonus) +5.4% vs +5.4% 3m/y expected
• Prior +5.7%
• July payrolls change 24k
• Prior 16k; revised to 14k

The headline statistic is quite bewildering and it paints a stronger labour market than in the months before. That being said, ONS cautions with a big caveat in saying that the estimates and data set contains “uncertainty”. Elaborating on that, they advise that one should be cautious when “interpreting short-term changes in headline rates and recommend using them as part of our suite of labour market indicators”. In other words, there is a compromise to quality and accuracy to the survey.

Put together with the wage numbers and there is more of a mixed report, with real wages also falling in the three months from April to June. That will make the BOE’s task of making sense of this report a bit tougher as such, not least with questions about the data source itself already.

GBP/USD is up slightly amid the better jobless rate figure, with the pair now trading near 1.2800 – up 0.2% on the day.