Good news all round – but can it continue?

Wages are rising, inflation is falling, and homes are getting more affordable. John Stepek wonders how long all this good news can last.

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Mark Carney: finally hits the target
(Image credit: 2018 Getty Images)

One of the biggest complaints of the post-2008 era has been the failure of wages to grow in "real" terms (ie, after inflation). Anyone highlighting Britain's remarkably strong employment levels throughout the crisis and beyond has grown used to caveating the figures with the observation that the jobs were of poor quality, or were low paid, or that pay packets were stagnating. The welcome news is that this critique is increasingly no longer a valid one.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.