Analysts at TD Securities note that the UK’s construction PMI unexpectedly dropped to 43.3 in September (mkt 45.0), just slightly higher than the cyclical low of 43.1 that was reached in June.

• “Survey details showed that commercial real estate continues to be the worst-performing sub-sector, and mirroring the weakness in manufacturing employment that we saw in yesterday's PMI report, Markit noted that jobs were cut to the greatest extent since Dec 2010. There seem to be growing alarm bells around the UK's labour market, and we may see the unemployment rate start trending a bit higher over the next few months.”