in demand, we may see a temporary rise in prices. let me turn now to the labour market, which is of course also highly important for this story. here, too, the story has been far from normal. during the covid period, employment has fallen much more than the rise in unemployment, albeit by significantly less than would ordinarily be implied by the decline in activity. two things help to explain this. first, the furlough scheme has worked well to preserve jobs in firms or sectors temporarily hit by the effects of the pandemic and associated restrictions. second, there has been a rise in inactivity, in other words those who do not have a job and are not currently searching for one. turning to earnings, measures have been affected by compositional effects related to the changes in the labour market caused by the pandemic. on the one hand, lower pay for those who have been furloughed has dragged on average wages. on the other hand, the fact that job losses have been skewed towards lower - paid and part - time roles has boosted the measure of average wages for those still in employment. initially the first of those effects dominated, and the level of private sector average weekly earnings fell during the middle of last year, such that for a while the growth rate was, unusually, negative. as the covid period has gone on, however, the second effect has come to dominate. to illustrate the magnitude, a second little piece of arithmetic. just suppose for a moment that, for the rest of this year, the level of average earnings is flat – what would be the peak rate of growth of the series? the answer would be 7 % due to the sizeable base effect, and then it would fall back quickly, other things equal. needless to say, 7 % is a chunky growth rate for earnings, but on its own it would tell us nothing of real substance about the future. that is not where we should place most of our focus on the labour market. our focus should be on whether, and how rapidly, people return to the labour force, and in what degree, a point i will come to in a moment. the risks to the outlook for inflation let me now turn to what could cause things to turn out differently, and thus what we must watch very carefully. first, so far, we have seen a pick - up in import prices which has extended beyond energy prices, and we have observed these

iba will no longer have the necessary panel bank submissions to continue to publish any nondollar libor tenors or one - week or two - month u. s. dollar ( usd ) libor after december 31, 2021. iba will no longer have the necessary panel bank submissions to continue publishing overnight, one - month, three - month, six - month, or one - year usd libor after june 30, 2023. adjusting to a new reality can be difficult, so let me be clear : these statements are definitive. some may speculate that the june 2023 date could be pushed back, but iba has now stated that it will not have sufficient panel bank submissions after this date, the fca has officially recognized this date, and the spread adjustments under the international swaps and derivatives 2 there is no scenario association ’ s ( isda ) ibor fallbacks protocol have been set accordingly. in which a panel - based usd libor will continue past june 2023, and nobody should expect it to. seeking to provide the same kind of clear statement about supervisory expectations, u. s. regulators issued supervisory guidance in november of last year. 3 in a letter to the banking organizations that we regulate, the federal reserve board, the federal deposit insurance corporation, and the office of the comptroller of the currency noted that there are safety and soundness risks associated with the continued use of usd libor in new transactions after 2021. accordingly, we have encouraged supervised entities to stop new use of libor as soon as is practicable and, in any event, by the end of this year. as with the statements about libor ’ s 1 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches end, there should be complete certainty about this guidance from u. s. regulators : after 2021, we believe that continued use of libor in new contracts would create safety and soundness risks, and we will examine bank practices accordingly. it is helpful to think about these separate announcements as essential pieces of a map, which, once put together, provide a complete picture of the path from here to libor ’ s end. when that larger picture comes into focus, i think you can see clearly that we have laid out a sensible way forward that provides certainty while also recognizing the need to address legacy contracts in a way that makes sense in the u. s. context. these announcements are absolutely not meant to support new libor activity or continued business as usual. instead, they are