Excerpts from speech by Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, 2018 Whitaker Lecture, Central Bank of Ireland, 14 September 2018
Although current rates of pay growth in the UK are below pre-crisis averages, this largely reflects continued weakness in productivity growth. While that weakness may reflect the early consequences of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, other factors seem more likely to be at play.
In the years following the global financial crisis, the aftereffects of that shock and the subsequent euro-area crisis exerted a drag on business investment. More recently, uncertainty around Brexit has had an additional dampening effect.
And while the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution may be felt over the coming decades, some of the Brexit effects on supply may be much more immediate.