growth not only in the fourth quarter of 2021 but also in the first half of 2022. in terms of the job market, households and businesses perceive that conditions are as tight as or tighter than they were pre - covid, even though the unemployment rate is more than a percentage point higher. there are certainly ample data showing labor demand is very strong. job openings remain at a record level. new businesses are starting up at a much higher pace than they did from 2017 to 2019. people are quitting jobs, either to take new ones or because they are confident that they can find new ones, likewise at a record rate. the improvement i expect in managing covid should drive demand higher but also provide a boost to labor supply as those who have been on the sidelines return to a job market that keeps improving. with respect to employment data, revisions to the august and september job numbers indicated that the summer slowdown in job gains wasn ’ t nearly as bad as initial reports suggested. job creation averaged 442, 000 a month from august to october, down from the 641, 000 average for the other seven months of 2021. nevertheless, this is a healthy pace for job creation and will speed the recovery of the labor market if it continues. adjusting for early retirements, we are only 2 million jobs short of where we were in february 2020. regarding the unemployment rate, in october the rate stood at 4. 6 percent. compared with one year ago, that rate has fallen 2. 3 percentage points. if the decline continues at about that pace in coming months, the unemployment rate could be below 4 percent before too long. in light of these data, in my view, the labor market is rapidly approaching maximum employment. but i will be watching for factors, 1 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches from continued supply bottlenecks and a winter surge of covid cases, that could slow this progress. turning to inflation, inflation has escalated substantially this year, along with a significant rise in inflation expectations. the october consumer price index report showed an unexpected surge in inflation. the monthly print corresponds to an annualized rate exceeding 10 percent, while the year - over - year increase was 6. 2 percent — the highest since december 1990. despite the highest wage gains in years, inflation this year has wiped out any real wage increase for the average worker. high inflation is painful to americans who have little choice about the goods and services they buy for everyday living. prices are up significantly at the

, especially in the areas of risk management, governance and business models. however, this improvement has been only marginal : as of 2021, seven in ten banks disclosed information about c & e risk management and governance – compared to five in ten in 2020 -, while only four in ten shared relevant information about the incorporation of c & e risks into their strategic considerations – up from three in ten in 2020. and, all in all, none of the 115 banks directly supervised by the ecb fully meets our supervisory expectations for disclosures. there is very little justification for this lack of substantial progress, particularly considering the vast amount and quality of climate - related data, tools and information shared by different international and european organisations and institutions in recent years. the sheer speed at which regulation and metrics are developing in this field should leave no room for any doubt : addressing climate - related and environmental risks, and publishing good - quality disclosures, is not optional. banks can and must do much better to improve the quality of their disclosures, and they need to do it quickly. however, we see a considerable disconnect between banks ’ perception of the importance of c & e risks as communicated to us, the supervisor, and what banks choose to publicly disclose. banks are trying to compensate for the poor quality of their disclosures by issuing a great volume of information around green topics. we end up with a lot of white noise and no real substance on what both markets and supervisors really want to know : how exposed is a bank to c & e risks and what is it doing to manage that exposure? it is of course relevant for banks to publicise their efforts to, for example, reduce the electricity consumption of their branches. however, it would be much more significant if they were to announce how they are steering their activities towards risk management practices that are aligned with a carbon - neutral economy. looking at the world through “ green - coloured glasses ” is not quite the same as a sound management of all material c & e risks. we also observe a lack of concrete detail in how banks substantiate their climate - related and environmental metrics and targets. for example, when reporting on their commitment to align with the paris agreement, only around one in five institutions disclose the methodologies, definitions and criteria for all of the figures, metrics and targets reported as material. more than one - third of institutions do not disclose these aspects at all. in light of the increasing importance of such commitments, interested parties