Deal or no deal, UK jobs will remain hard to fill | Larry Elliott

Brexit might not have much of an effect on the labour market as unemployment hits a record low

Anybody expecting the Brexit impasse to harm the UK's labour market has so far been proved wrong. Employment is at its highest ever level, the number of job vacancies has hit a new record and the unemployment rate for women has dropped below 4% for the first time. Growth slowed in the final quarter of 2018 but the dole queues shortened. Crisis, what crisis?

One possibility is that because the latest jobs and wages data from the Office for National Statistics only covers the period to December, it might not capture more recent surveys suggesting that firms have become warier about hiring since the turn of the year.

Related: Employers squeezed as job vacancies grow to record levels