Inflation heading below 1%

The lacklustre rise in prices could persuade the Bank of England to put off hiking interest rates.

The annual rate of consumer price inflation (CPI) fell to 1.2% in September, a 0.3% drop from the previous month and the lowest rate since September 2009. It was also the second-lowest rate of price increases seen in a decade. Core inflation, which strips out volatile energy and food, fell to 1.5%, a level last seen in April 2009.

This week's labour market data were also encouraging. The unemployment rate declined to a near-six-year low of 6% in August. Employment edged up to a record high of 30.8 million. But annual growth in earnings remains low, at 0.8%.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.