Intense arguments on productivity, labor market slack and wage growth are expected to dominate debate among Bank of England policymakers ahead of the August Inflation Report.
The Bank of England's (BoE) nine-member rate setting committee will most probably leave policy unchanged at its August meeting, although expectations suggest a minority of the policymakers may vote for the first rate hike.
This may or may not be surprising given the current strength of economic growth, the brisk tightening of the labor market, and the fact that there has already been some disagreement at the BoE since March 2009, when policymakers tuned to extraordinary stimulus policy.
There was a period of a continuous split at the Monetary Policy committee (MPC) between June 2010 and July 2011 when, at times, as many as three MPC members had voted for a rate hike. One of those was Martin Weale, considered as one of the most hawkish of the MPC members. Since then, the committee have remained unanimous on rates.
This time, the BoE aficionados again expect Weale to be among the first to split from the majority, although the change to the current policy is not expected until late this year or early next year.
Arguments intensify ahead of Inflation Report
The level of slack in the UK labor market as well as productivity and wage growth puzzles, and their impact on the medium-term inflation outlook are among the top bullet points for discussion ahead of the August Inflation Report.
In its May Inflation Report, the BoE estimated the level of slack at between 1% to 1.5%, with economists and policymakers suggesting this estimate may squeeze in August which could suggest an earlier policy tightening.
Speaking before the UK Treasury Select Committee in July, Nemat Shafik, a newcomer to the MPC, said that the August estimates on the level of slack "will probably be lower because we have seen that output and employment have improved far better than we had expected."
However, a slight slow-down in economic growth expected in the second half of this year, while increasing political and geopolitical uncertainties in Russia and Ukraine, or indeed the Scottish referendum, should also have a moderate impact on the upcoming policy decisions.
Furthermore, rising the base rate earlier when real wage growth remains weak would pose a threat to the still fragile growth. Here we should consider a substantially high level of household debt, accumulated through mortgages, and its detrimental impact on spending once the rates start rising.
A similar issue was also raised in the July MPC minutes, which said “an unexpected increase in interest rates when real wages were not yet rising could lead to an outsized reaction in asset prices and destabilize the recovery.” For this very reason, the BoE keeps reiterating that policy tightening will be gradual and slow.
But if real wages do rise in the upcoming months while at the same time productivity remains weak, policymakers would face an upside risk to the medium-term inflation outlook as higher labor unit costs would push inflationary price pressures further up in the medium term. This could turn into an even more heated argument at the MPC roundtable and lead to an earlier rate hike to suppress inflationary pressures.
Commenting on the wage growth versus productivity conundrum, Schroders' chief economist Keith Wade said last week that "when higher real wages are not matched by increased productivity, unit wage costs rise and force businesses to raise prices, or face a squeeze on their profit margins … Consequently, we need to look at the combination of wages and productivity to gauge the effect on inflation through unit wage costs."
"Higher wages are undoubtedly good for all if backed by higher productivity, but it is unit wage costs, not wages per se, which influence inflation in the near term," he added.
But the official data on UK labor market productivity significantly lags behind in time (the latest available data on labor market productivity are from the first quarter of this year) so it would be hardly helpful to the MPC to gauge real wage growth against the rise in productivity.
What this all means for the upcoming policy decisions?
Apparently, in order for the BoE to avoid uncertainty and confusion, and to stick to a clear variable, policymakers chose to gauge real wage growth and its impact on the inflation outlook, in a similar fashion they picked the jobless rate under its first phase of forward guidance back in August 2013.
"Given the contradictory signals from employment and wages, uncertainty about the degree of slack had risen on the month and, in light of this uncertainty, an argument could be made for putting more stress on the expected path of costs, particularly wages, in assessing inflationary pressures," the July MPC minutes said.
On the near-term policy path, not much of a precise guidance can be expected from the BoE, partly in order to avoid what Governor Mark Carney called a 'short term noise'.
Also, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently raised concerns about the BoE's comments on the time-frame of the first rate hike.
"Looking ahead, the process of normalizing monetary conditions will put a premium on effective communication: the Bank will want to reduce the risks of adverse effects from surprises about changes in policy settings, yet not feed spurious certainty about future interest rates," the IMF said in its latest 2014 Article IV Consultation paper published in July.
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