It’s time to do the honourable thing and raise interest rates

Even as unemployment approaches his 7% target, Mark Carney has made it clear he’s not about to raise interest rates. But he should, and soon.

Last year, Bank of England governor Mark Carney told us that when the unemployment rate got down to 7% the Bank would have a think about raising rates from the 300-year lows everyone is beginning to think are normal. It seems that's already happened the latest number came in at 7.1%.

Carney has had a think, and he has let it be known around Davos that rates aren't going anywhere. Apparently we are in a "different place" to where we were last summer, so the guidance given then is no longer relevant. Instead, we have to look at many, many other indicators to be sure the UK is at "escape velocity."

We are clearly being guided to think that forward guidance is about to be reguided (it's a good policy isn't it?) But to what? Back to inflation? That seems silly, given that it was only moved away from inflation a few months ago. And even when rates were supposed to move with inflation, they didn't.

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If you were Mark Carney, would you raise interest rates? When will that be? The thing is that wages could easily confound Carney just as much as the unemployment numbers have.

As Halkin's Peter Warburton points out, we now have something of a "runaway labour market". Yet earnings are barely rising at all bar in the wholesale, retailing, hotels and restaurant sector where they are up 3.1% (workers in these areas have seen their pay keep pace with inflation!). We still have a lot of people out of work - 2.3 million are counted as unemployed, and about the same as inactive but wanting a job', to say nothing of the two million who are long-term sick.

But nonetheless, "based on historical relationships recruitment hiring survey strength is consistent with annual pay growth of 5% not 1%." This is a "dam waiting to burst" and that makes it "the honourable duty of the Bank of England to raise Base Rate." We agree and we aren't the only ones. If you look at the strength of the pound you will see that the market has already priced a rise in.

Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.