Pantheon Publications
Below is a list of our Publications for the last 5 months. If you are looking for reports older than 6 months please email info@pantheonmacro.com, or contact your account rep.
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Elliott Laidman Doak (Senior UK Economist)
- Food, energy-price increases and an erratic jump in airfares drove CPI inflation up to 3.8%.
- Underlying services inflation is easing but remains far too high for the MPC to cut rapidly.
- Headline CPI averaging 3.8% for the rest of 2025 means the MPC will have to stay on hold.
- Sterling has had a mixed year so far against peers, as policy uncertainty has soared.
- We expect less easing than the market, but fiscal worries will weigh on sterling come Budget time.
- Pantheon’s interest rate calls collectively imply cable at 1.35 and GBPEUR at 1.18 at end-2025.
- The ONS’s measure of house prices rebounded by 0.7% on a seasonally adjusted basis in May.
- Activity indicators and gains in the private-sector house price indices suggest another rise in June.
- Sticky interest rates are a risk to house price inflation, but we retain our call for prices to gain 3.75% in 2025.
- GDP growth beat consensus expectations in June, rising by 0.4% month-to-month.
- Quarter-to-quarter growth of 0.3% in Q2 was above the MPC’s latest forecast, 0.1%.
- The expenditure breakdown for GDP in H1 shows household spending growing at a healthy pace.
- We look for a 1.0% month-to-month rise in retail sales in July as surveys signal healthy consumer spending.
- Households appear confident and comfortable with their assets, so the saving rate should fall in H2.
- Rising inflation, falling jobs and fiscal worries remain risks to the outlook.
- Payrolls declined by 8K month-to-month in July, the smallest drop in six months.
- Redundancies fell and vacancies look to have stabilised; the worst of the job slowdown is over.
- Private-sector pay growth was below the MPC’s call in Q2, but it remains too high to cut rates rapidly.
- Public sector borrowing matched the OBR’s expectations to June on a cumulative basis…
- ...but policy U-turns and overoptimistic OBR growth forecasts mean the Chancellor faces a £13B hole.
- We expect back-loaded stealth and ‘sin’ tax hikes to cover most of the £20B gap against headroom.
- We expect GDP to rise 0.2% month-to-month in June, as retail sales, real estate and autos output rebound.
- Our call points to quarter-to-quarter growth of 0.2% in Q2, above the 0.1% forecast in the MPC’s May MPR.
- We think growth will run close to potential for the rest of 2025, giving the MPC little room for manoeuvre.
- Credit is flowing to businesses and households, as economic uncertainty falls and borrowing costs drop.
- Saving flows temporarily spiked on cash ISA rumours, but the trend remains for lower household saving.
- Rising mortgage approvals suggest that the slowdown in the housing market is over.
- We expect payrolls to be revised up to an 8K fall in June, and to drop by 7K in July.
- Vacancies leading indicators suggest the labour market is stabilising after-payroll-tax-hike disruption.
- We expect another solid private-sector ex-bonus AWE gain, at 0.4% month-to-month in June.
- In one line: Manufacturing activity will continue to recover from the tariff-induced slowdown.
- The PMI’s headline activity index fell in July and signals quarter-to-quarter growth of 0.1% in Q3.
- But a short-lived rise in global trade policy uncertainty likely spooked firms, so we expect an upward revision.
- The PMI overstates job market weakness because of a sample seemingly skewed towards large firms.
- An upward revision to Q1 consumer spending growth gives a more solid base to economic growth.
- The household saving rate dip in Q1 is a sign of things to come, which should support consumer spending.
- Firms are borrowing again as all the “Liberation Day” surge in economic policy uncertainty has unwound.
- We cut our Q2 GDP growth forecast to 0.2% quarter-to-quarter from 0.3% previously, after soft data.
- Energy prices nudge up our inflation forecasts; we see CPI inflation peaking at 3.7% in September.
- We see payrolls and GDP rebounding, which keeps us expecting only one more rate cut this year.
- In one line: Manufacturing orders fall in June but the worst of the tariff-induced slowdown appears over.
- Collapsing payrolls in May look inconsistent with stable or improving survey-based measures of jobs.
- The soft data suggest the worst of the slowdown caused by the payroll-tax hike is behind us.
- Stable economic growth, driven by less trade-related uncertainty, will give a hawkish tint to the job data.
- The PMI’s headline activity index rose in June but still signals unchanged quarter-to-quarter GDP in Q2…
- …But we think the PMI continues to underestimate activity and retain our call for GDP growth of 0.2%.
- The services output balance fell sharply in June, but that drop looks erratic; the MPC will wait for clarity.
- The MPC kept rates on hold in June, but one more member than we expected voted to cut by 25bp.
- Rate-setters left their key guidance paragraph broadly unchanged; “gradual and careful” remains the mantra.
- We still expect just one more cut to Bank Rate in 2025, in November.
- Official house price inflation will slow in April as stamp-duty disruption feeds through.
- The slowdown will be short-lived, with forward-looking activity indicators improving in May.
- We retain our call for house prices to rise 4.5% year-over-year in 2025.
- We expect the initial estimate of May payrolls to show a 26K month-to-month decline.
- LFS unemployment will likely tick up to 4.6% in April, and LFS employment should gain 48K.
- We expect year-over-year whole-economy AWE ex-bonus growth to fall to 5.3% in April, from 5.6%.
