“Britain’s buoyant jobs market has managed to defy economic gravity once again, and is successfully floating above the sputtering economy.
“Despite its increasing tightness, the labour market continues to deliver an improbable combination of new jobs, falling unemployment and rising wages.
“If the job creation boom continues like this, full employment should soon move out of the hypothetical and into the real.
“But for now there is no sign that a lack of people is cramping the economy’s ability to create new jobs, even though both unemployment and the inactivity rate are at their lowest levels for more than four decades.
“Nevertheless the tightness in the labour market is forcing employers to fight ever harder for every recruit, and is steadily driving up wages.
“While workers will welcome the return of real wage growth, pay rises alone cannot deliver lasting benefits to the economy. In the long term rising wages can stoke inflation unless we see the one thing that continues to elude the surprisingly resilient labour market - better productivity.”
