Normal people see rising wages as a source of cheer. But to Scrooge-like central bankers, bumper pay packets are a cause for concern. The OECD expects that in 2023 remuneration per employee in Britain will grow by more than 7 per cent, compared with 5.5 per cent in the eurozone (excluding Latvia, Lithuania and Croatia) and 3.7 per cent in America. How worrying is this really?

Wages can rise for lots of reasons. The obvious one is that they are part of the general upward drift in prices, which is normally about 2 per cent a year. The best one is that workers are being rewarded for higher productivity. That could support growth of perhaps another 1-1.5 percentage points.

Other sources of real wage strength might include falling import prices. (Intuitively, foreigners wanting to sell us cheaper stuff is nice and can make us better off.) Or employees might bargain for a bigger share of the economic pie, crimping companies’ profit margins. Relying on either to deliver wage gains forever is risky, though, since foreigners are fickle and eventually profits will run out.