Average weekly earnings including bonus payments grew by 0.6pc in the three months to the end of July, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Regular pay grew by 0.7pc over the same period.
While wage growth has bounced back from last month's shock contraction in total earnings , and more strongly than analysts had forecast, the average pay packet is still growing much slower than July's official inflation rate of 1.6pc. The 0.2pc decline in total pay reported last month was also revised to 0.1pc.
The ONS said just over two million people were out of work in the quarter to July, 468,000 fewer than a year earlier. This is the largest annual fall in unemployment since 1988.
The ONS said 30.6m people were now in work, 74,000 more than in the previous quarter.
Changes to benefit rules have encouraged more people to look for work, according to Ben Broadbent, the Bank's deputy governor . However, he said this had also pushed down average wages.
A continued pattern of weak wages forced the Bank to slash its wage forecasts for 2014 in half. Policymakers now expect average earnings to grow by 1.25pc this year.
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