{"id":247342,"date":"2025-07-08T06:52:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T06:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/247342\/"},"modified":"2025-07-08T06:52:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T06:52:10","slug":"ulster-bank-business-activity-in-northern-ireland-fell-last-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/247342\/","title":{"rendered":"Ulster Bank: Business activity in Northern Ireland fell last month"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The only sector recording an increase in activity was construction, whereas retail reported the sharpest decline.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Chief economist for Ulster Bank, Sebastian Burnside, said the survey was &#8220;good news&#8221; for the local labour market in June as companies started hiring again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Northern Ireland was the only area of the UK where employment rose.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Other aspects paint a more subdued picture, however,&#8221; Mr Burnside said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The expansion in output we saw last month was not sustained into June as new order inflows remained muted.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The survey also suggested input prices continued to increase rapidly in June, with the pace of inflation ticking higher.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Around one-third of respondents registered an increase in input costs, again often linked to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cx202nlg728o\" class=\"ssrcss-f6h2dj-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">higher wages and the rise in National Insurance contributions<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Companies are still confident about the year-ahead outlook, however, so we will hopefully see some demand and output improvements during the second half of the year,&#8221; Mr Burnside said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The only sector recording an increase in activity was construction, whereas retail reported the sharpest decline. Chief economist&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[1144,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-247342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-northern-ireland","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114816296226833404","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}