Dovish vibes from jobs market – ING

This morning’s UK jobs numbers came in on the soft side, ING’s FX analyst Francesco Pesole notes.

EUR/GBP continues to face some upside risk

“Unemployment rose to 5.0% in the three months to September (exp. 4.9%) and October’s employment contracted by -32k, following a revised -32k (first print was -10k) for September. Weekly earnings slowed across the board, with the headline (3M/YoY) measure undershooting expectations at 4.8%.”

“These aren’t screamingly dovish figures, but they do endorse to some extent the ongoing dovish repricing of Bank of England rate expectations. Remember that part of the BoE’s hawkish pivot in the summer was based on downplaying risks to the labour market whilst refocusing on inflation issues. Now, both inflation and jobs data are starting to point down, and we think the Autumn Budget’s tax hikes will provide the final argument for a cut in December.”

“EUR/GBP continues to face some upside risks as markets aren’t fully pricing in a December move (18bp this morning). However, the pair is already trading on the rich side as GBP embeds some risk premium ahead of the budget. Our year-end target remains 0.88.”