considerable impact on the monetary policy transmission process, and monetary policymakers ’ ability to guarantee price stability and price developments as such. financial crises almost always originate in excessively loose bank lending. 3 the last crisis was no exception. confining monetary policy to mopping up when the milk is already spilled creates an asymmetry. in my opinion, a symmetrical monetary policy that takes into account money and credit growth and that is oriented towards the medium term seems most conducive to price stability. just to be clear : i am not arguing in favour of a monetary policy that strictly targets money growth. but i do suggest that money and credit developments provide valuable information to monetary policymakers. in principle, this is already the basis of the eurosystem ’ s two - pillar strategy. 4 e - krona finally, a project where the riksbank seems to be even more ahead of the pack is digital central bank money. developments in this field have been dizzying. we have had to familiarise ourselves with new concepts, including at least the basic intuition of the blockchain, and, not to forget, a host of buzzwords. and whereas minting coins in the 17th century required quite a bit of metal, as i pointed out at the beginning, mining crypto token can require quite a bit of energy — a single bitcoin transaction, for example, uses up to 900 kilowatt hours of electricity ( in april 2018 ), enough to power a four - person household for two months. separating hidden potentials of new technologies from the hype and excesses is challenging, often arduous. the effects of digital central bank money on the payment system will not be the only consideration for central banks, however. depending on its concrete design, digital central bank money would provide non - financial corporations and even households with access to the central bank balance sheet. evidently, cash allows this, too. but unlike cash, digital balances have no noteworthy storage costs. 3 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches allowing the public to hold claims on the central bank might make their liquid assets safer, because a central bank cannot become insolvent. this is a feature which will become relevant especially in times of crisis – when there will be a strong incentive for money holders to switch bank deposits into the official digital currency simply at the push of a button. but what might be a boon for savers in search of safety might be a bane for banks, as this makes a bank

pay power speech given by andrew g haldane chief economist bank of england acas “ future of work ” conference congress centre, london 10 october 2018 the views expressed here are not necessarily those of the bank of england or the monetary policy committee. i would like to thank will abel, shiv chowla, tomas key, brad speigner and ben stokes for their help in preparing the text. i would like to thank ben broadbent, clare macallan, becky maule, mette nielsen, silvana tenreyro and jan vlieghe for their comments and contributions. this work contains statistical data from ons which is crown copyright. the use of the ons statistical data in this work does not imply the endorsement of the ons in relation to the interpretation or analysis of the statistical data. this work uses research datasets which may not exactly reproduce national statistics aggregates. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / speeches it is great pleasure to be here at the acas annual conference whose theme this year is the “ future of work ”. it is a particular pleasure to have brendan barber as chair. as a member of the bank of england ’ s court between 2003 and 2012, brendan ’ s insights on the labour market and wider economy were crucial in helping the bank steer a policy course through a period of first macroeconomic calm and then extra - ordinary macroeconomic storm following the global financial crisis. it is the labour market that i want to discuss today. we have seen an unusual pattern emerge here over recent years. jobs growth has been strong, with over 2 million new jobs created since the end of 2012. but pay growth has remained weak by historic standards, averaging around 2 % annually. this pattern has been replicated across a number of other advanced economies. as we reach the anniversary of what has become a “ lost decade ” for inflation - adjusted pay in the uk, it is a good time to take stock. what explains this puzzling pattern of rich jobs but poor pay growth? some of the reasons for weak pay have been cyclical. the financial crisis caused large job losses. a significant pool of unemployed workers emerged and job insecurities rose, depressing pay growth. recently, the uk ’ s economic recovery has shrunk the pool of unemployed workers and reduced somewhat job insecurity. had these cyclical factors been the only ones at work, we might have expected a stronger recovery in