U.K. Jobs, Swiss Watch Negative Rates, Hungary to Act: Eco Day

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Welcome to Tuesday, Europe. Here’s the latest news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics to help you start the day.

• Job opportunities remain below pre-pandemic levels for a quarter of the U.K. workforce, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said in a report that suggests more slack in the labor market than official estimates show
• Swiss National Bank policy makers watching the effects of negative interest rates on the economy are worrying about the real-estate bubble that their policy is helping to foster
• Meanwhile, Hungary’s soaring price growth is leaving the central bank little room to slow the most aggressive monetary-tightening campaign in the European Union
• Sweden’s central bank will this week reveal if a buoyant economic recovery and inflation that is heading toward the fastest since 2008 are reason enough to bring forward plans for tightening monetary policy
• Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau said there is a temporary spike in inflation due to supply difficulties and high oil and raw-material prices
• Ahead of one of the most keenly anticipated meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee in years, the debate is as intense as ever over whether the current dose of inflation saw a downtick on both a core (excluding food and fuel) basis, and a headline basis including the entire basket of products in the index: Authers’ Indicators
• Federal Reserve officials say they want to use monetary policy to promote an inclusive economy, but so far they’ve shied away from describing what such an economy might look like
• Right now, a lot of the inflation discussion is about fairly short-term factors. Chips. Used cars. Rent. And other categories that are feeling the impact of the pandemic. How long will these categories be on the move? At what point will these moves no longer be considered “transitory?” These are the debates people are having
• Haruhiko Kuroda is poised to become the Bank of Japan’s longest-running governor at the end of this month, testimony to his ability to keep political and market pressure at bay despite the failure of his unprecedented monetary experiment to spark inflation
• The crisis at China Evergrande Group appears to be coming to a head for markets. But in our view this isn’t China’s Lehman moment. A quick fix is very unlikely but so too is a systemic meltdown. David Qu writes
• New Zealand’s central bank has damped speculation it could start its tightening cycle with a 50 basis-point interest-rate hike next month, signaling it’s more likely to take a cautious approach

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