In the three months to September 2025, average weekly earnings in the United Kingdom grew by 4.6 percent. In the same month, the inflation rate for the Consumer Price Index was 3.6 percent, indicating that wages were rising faster than prices that month. In 2024, the annual inflation rate for the United Kingdom was 2.5 percent, with the average rate for 2025 predicted to rise to 3.5 percent, revised upwards from an earlier prediction. The UK has only recently recovered from a period of elevated inflation, which saw the CPI rate reach 9.1 percent in 2022, and 7.3 percent in 2023. Despite an uptick in inflation in 2025, the inflation rate is expected to fall to 2.5 percent in 2026, and two percent between 2027 and 2029.
Current statistics on this topic
Inflation nevertheless remains elevated, fueled not only by high food inflation, but also by underlying core inflation. As of February 2025, the overall CPI inflation rate was 2.8 percent, although an uptick in inflation is expected later in the year, with a rate of 3.7 percent forecast for the third quarter of the year. Another way of measuring inflation is to strip out the volatility of energy and food prices and look at the underlying core inflation rate.
Annual inflation rate of the Retail Price Index in the United Kingdom from 2019 to 2029
As of the most recent month, prices were rising fastest in the education sector, at 7.5percent, with prices increasing at the slowest rate in the clothing and footwear sector. One of the main consequences of high inflation and low wage growth throughout 2022 and 2023 was an increase in industrial action in the UK. In December 2022, for example, there were approximately 830,000 working days lost due to labor disputes.
Throughout this month, workers across various industry sectors were involved in industrial disputes, such as nurses, train drivers, and driving instructors. Many of the workers who took part in strikes were part of the UK’s public sector, which saw far weaker wage growth than that of the private sector throughout 2022. non gamstop casinos Widespread industrial action continued into 2023, with approximately 303,000 workers involved in industrial disputes in March 2023. There was far less industrial action by 2024, however, due to settlements in many of the disputes, although some are ongoing as of 2025.
- The highest average temperature recorded in 2024 until November was in August, at 16.8 degrees Celsius.
- After energy prices in 2023 fell relative to 2022, the overall inflation rate in the UK declined quite rapidly, with core inflation overtaking the overall rate in July 2023.
- In 2024, the annual inflation rate for the United Kingdom was 2.5 percent, with the average rate for 2025 predicted to rise to 3.5 percent, revised upwards from an earlier prediction.
- The two main drivers of price increases during this time were food and energy inflation, two of the main spending areas of UK households.
High inflation falls to more typical levels by 2024
Inflation is an important measure of any country’s economy, and the Retail Price Index (RPI) is one of the most widely used indicators in the United Kingdom, with the rate expected to be 4.1 percent in 2025, compared with 3.6 percent in 2024. This followed 2022, when RPI inflation reached a rate of 11.6 percent, by far the highest annual rate during this provided time period. Hitting fiscal targets, such as reducing the national debt, will require a careful balancing of the books from the current government, and the possibility for either spending cuts or tax rises. Less than a year after implementing cuts to Winter Fuel, the government performed a U-Turn on the issue, and will make it widely available by the winter of 2025.
Between 1961 and 1990, temperatures in England averaged nine degrees Celsius, and from 2013 to 2022, average temperatures in the country had increased to 10.3 degrees Celsius. Although the Retail Price Index is a commonly utilized inflation indicator, the UK also uses a newer method of calculating inflation, the Consumer Price Index. The CPI, along with the CPIH (Consumer Price Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs) are usually preferred by the UK government, but the RPI is still used in certain instances. Increases in rail fares for example, are calculated using the RPI, while increases in pension payments are calculated using CPI, when this is used as the uprating factor. The use of one inflation measure over the other can therefore have a significant impact on people’s lives in the UK.