After months of sluggish wage growth, personal finances are due to get some respite. The strain of small pay packets has driven consumers into frugality and prompted a general reluctance to loosen purse strings. As a reaction to recent difficulty in finding skilled workers, employers have been forced to increase wages. This will release some of the pressure on households while simultanously increasing it for businesses who are barely struggling to sustain prosperity.
This new activity was recorded in the latest monthly survey from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC). It found that wages in August grew at the second fastest rate in more than three years. The new figures follow reports from recruiters that the availability of staff has continued to decline sharply.
Consumers have been waiting patiently for wage growth to improve, with rising living costs and higher energy prices weighing down on household budgets. Hopefully larger pay packets will drive up retail sales as consumers will have more money to spend on essentials.
The general instigator has been the ongoing skill shortage, which has put pressure on employers. Employment is high and unemployment within the UK is at a 43-year low, but finding skilled workers has proven to be a much tougher challenge.
According to the REC survey, it is IT, computing and engineering industries where shortages were most acute. The construction and manufacturing sectors were also hit hard by the departure of large numbers of their skilled EU workforce.