MNI BRIEF: BOE's Mann-Shift To Services Easing Price Pressures

Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee member Catherine Mann said that so far the tight labour market is only feeding through to wage growth acceleration in some segments of the jobs market.

While "there is a very robust labour market", wage growth has been most marked at the bottom end of the scale, said Mann, who voted against a rate hike in November, speaking at a JP Morgan event Mann.

"There are a number of jobs where people are coming back, they are getting higher and higher wage rates but it is at the low end of the wage distribution," she said, providing no commentary as to when she thought the first rate hike should come.

With Covid concerns fading, consumer demand is shifting from goods to services, with restaurant bookings now above pre-Covid levels, she said. This rotation in demand should ease the upward pressure on goods price inflation which has been a key driver of high headline inflation, she added.