UK Publications
Below is a list of our UK Publications for the last 5 months. If you are looking for reports older than 5 months please email info@pantheonmacro.com, or contact your account rep
Please use the filters on the right to search for a specific date or topic.
Daily Monitor Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)
- Official payroll data are vastly exaggerating the weakness in the job market, in our view.
- May’s payrolls reading is especially unreliable, while the official data have diverged hugely from surveys.
- Job vacancies seem to be stabilising, redundancies are low and jobless claims are down since October.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- Inflation fell in May, as the ONS chopped 0.1pp off price growth to correct for the error in April’s data.
- Headline CPI at 3.4% in May, down from 3.5%, would have been unchanged without the ONS’s adjustment.
- Energy price increases mean we now expect inflation to peak at 3.7% in September, up from 3.6% before.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- Five-year household inflation expectations hit a record high in May, adjusting for a break in the BoE’s survey.
- Inflation expectations have surged more since August 2024 than past behaviour would have signalled.
- Elevated inflation expectations mean the MPC cannot simply ‘look through’ above-target inflation.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- The unwinding of tariff and tax-hike front-running dragged down GDP growth in April…
- …But the monthly fall looks exaggerated to us, so we expect GDP to rebound in May.
- We thus only shave our forecast for Q2 GDP growth, to 0.2% quarter-to-quarter, from 0.3% previously.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- We expect the MPC to vote seven-to-two to keep Bank Rate on hold at next week’s meeting.
- Payrolls lift the chance of an August cut, but the MPC will likely stick to its “gradual and cautious” guidance.
- We are comfortable assuming only one more rate cut in this cycle, even if it may now come sooner.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- May’s huge fall in payrolls looks exaggerated; other indicators, such as redundancies, are improving.
- Rising LFS employment and falling payrolls point to workers shifting towards self-employment.
- Wage growth is easing gradually but still remains way above inflation-target-consistent rates.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- We expect CPI inflation in May to slow to 3.4%—close to rounding to 3.3%—from 3.5% in April.
- A correction to Vehicle Excise Duty and airfare falls will be partly offset by strong food and clothes prices.
- May’s CPI inflation will likely match the MPC’s forecast, and services inflation will slightly exceed it.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- The ONS overstated April CPI by 0.1pp because of an error in Vehicle Duty; this will be corrected in May CPI.
- We adjust our forecasts only fractionally because we had assumed a good chance that VED was wrong.
- Strong goods prices mean inflation should slow only to 3.4% in May, from the erroneous 3.5% in April.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- The May PMI shows UK growth still weak, but recovering as April’s tariff panic fades.
- GDP growth usually far exceeds the PMI steer when uncertainty is high; we look for 0.3% q/q growth in Q2.
- Services firms squeezing margins holds out the hope of inflation easing, but we think it’s just a blip.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- Consumers are back to spending rather than saving, which should keep GDP growth ticking along.
- Households seem to be reducing saving, and borrowing on credit cards to support spending.
- Manufacturing is past the worst, and so far we see little sign of trade diversion cutting goods inflation.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- Our early calculations suggest CPI inflation will fall only slightly in May, to 3.4%.
- Clothes, computer games, hotel prices and food should mostly offset a fall in travel prices.
- Duty hikes scheduled for 2026 will support headline inflation; we expect more duty hikes to be announced.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- The tariff shock is fading and Q1 GDP beat consensus, so we raise our 2025 growth forecast to 1.3%.
- Inflation will hover around 3.4% for the rest of 2025, and drop below 3.0% again only next April.
- Easing uncertainty, elevated inflation and growth momentum mean just one more rate cut in 2025.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- Our high neutral rate estimate of 3.75%-4.0% is one reason we expect only one more MPC rate cut.
- Elevated inflation expectations, especially for consumers, point to a high neutral rate.
- Slowing disinflation in 2025 also suggests that Bank Rate is only modestly restrictive now.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- Falling uncertainty as President Trump dialled back his more ruinous tariffs boosted the PMI in May.
- The PMI signals 0.3% q/q GDP growth once we adjust for the survey’s typical overreaction to uncertainty.
- The MPC will welcome easing price pressures but needs another month of data to confirm the trend.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- Administered, government-set and indexed price hikes drove inflation up to 3.5% in April.
- Erratic factors added only modestly to inflation, so the MPC will have to take the headline seriously.
- Accumulated news—growth, lower tariffs, inflation—leads us to expect only one more rate cut this year.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- Official house price inflation reached a 26-month high in February, at 5.4%, up from 4.8% in January.
- Momentum will dip temporarily as the stamp-duty distortion unwinds…
- ...But strong wage growth and falling interest rates should still deliver house price inflation of 4% in 2025.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- New rules will cut immigration by 98K a year—0.2% of the population—according to government estimates.
- We estimate that the curbs will slow potential growth by 0.1% per year, raising the pressure for tax hikes.
- A greater sectoral mismatch between workers and jobs will likely result too, adding to wage pressures.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- UK GDP was surprisingly strong again in March; the economy was ticking over fine ahead of the trade war.
- We think the MPC is far too pessimistic in pegging underlying growth at 0.0% in Q1.
- We raise our forecasts for GDP growth in 2025 and 2026, but risks remain tilted to the downside.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- We expect CPI inflation to jump to 3.6% in April, from 2.6%, above the MPC’s forecast, 3.4%.
- We estimate that indexed, government-set and utility prices will add 120bp to April inflation.
- We see risks to the MPC’s forecast skewed upwards, as a raft of cost rises could prompt price rises.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
- The labour market is easing gradually, and vacancies suggest the market is now a little ‘loose’.
- But March and April look like the low point for jobs, with jobless claims steady and redundancies falling.
- Pay growth is stronger than slack suggests, and too punchy to deliver sustainable 2% inflation soon.
Rob Wood (Chief UK Economist)UK
