12:11

It’s misleading to argue the strong rise in wages in the period April to June shows the jobs market “shines” (Reuters) or that the jobs market is “tight” (Financial Times), says my colleague Phillip Inman:

The private sector has cut vacancies and increased redundancies, pushing more workers on to zero hour contracts, indicating that employers are increasingly nervous about the future.

Employers also haven’t increased pay by much for the bulk of workers. The rise comes for those on the bottom pay scales and only then because the government increased the national Minimum wage this year for more than 2 million workers by 4.9%. Pay rises for public sector workers in the spring, which were largely absent in previous years, also stand out as a fresh impetus for the rise in average regular wages

As John Philpott, the director of the Jobs Economist consultancy argues: