BoE Decision Maker Panel

The Decision Maker Panel (DMP) is a monthly online Bank of England survey with King's College London and the University of Nottingham. Launched in August 2016, it surveys chief financial officers, or chief executives when unavailable, in UK firms with 10 or more employees. It covers private and third-sector employers across industries and regions, except public administration and defence.

It draws about 2,500 replies a month from about 73,000 firms, covering 4% of private-sector employment. It tracks own prices, inflation expectations, wages, jobs, sales and investment. But it never measures consumer-price inflation directly, and never covers households or firms with under 10 staff.

Responses arrive online in a 2-week window inside the month, with reminders on days 7 and 14. Firms rotate across 3 monthly groups covering sales and prices, jobs and pay, and spending within each quarter.

Monthly publication falls on a Friday, a week before the Monetary Policy Report in report months; policymakers see results first. Each release brings a news note, monthly key-series files and quarterly all-question files with industry splits. All results are weighted and headlines are 3-month averages, with no revision policy stated.

Headline changes come from firms' outcomes and forecasts for prices, pay, jobs, sales and spending.

• Own-price growth, realised and expected: annual change in firms' own selling prices, past 12 months and year ahead.
• CPI inflation expectations: firms' consumer-price inflation forecasts at 1-year and 3-year horizons.
• Wage growth, realised and expected: annual change in pay per worker, past 12 months and year ahead.
• Employment growth, realised and expected: change in staff numbers, turned from levels into symmetric rates, sometimes negative.
• Sales growth, realised and expected: annual change in turnover, with moves beyond ±100% dropped as outliers.
• Investment growth, uncertainty and special topics: change in capital spending and forecast spread, plus topical energy, tax and rate questions.

In the September 17, 2020 release, firms put the Covid hit at 30% for sales, 5% for jobs and 33% for investment. That was milder than the May 2020 fears of 42% for sales, 6% for jobs and 43% for investment. Sales were seen healing slowly: down 14% in Q3, 12% in Q4, 10% next Q1 and 5% next Q2.

Jobs lagged output, with the drag seen deepening to 8% in Q4 before easing to 5% by Q2 2021. Furlough (the state-backed job-retention scheme) covered 32% of staff in Q2, then 18% in July and 12% in August. It was seen at 8% in September and 4% in Q4, while active hours fell 8%.

1. Sample: firms with 10 or more staff are picked at random and phoned, asking first for the finance chief or the chief executive. New joiners take an intro survey, then rotate across 3 monthly groups for prices, pay and spending.
2. Expectations: each firm gives 5 growth rates of its own, lowest to highest, each with a probability, summing to 100%. For example, scenarios from −2% to 6% average to 2.0%, with uncertainty of ±2.19 points.
3. Growth rates: sales, prices, costs and wages are asked as rates, while jobs and spending move from levels to Davis-Haltiwanger-Schuh (DHS) rates. Prices and pay compare now with 12 months ago and ahead, while sales compares quarters. Staff rising from 100 to 105 gives about 4.88%.
4. Clean: sales beyond ±100% and prices, jobs, costs and pay beyond ±50% are dropped as missing. No-spending pairs, 100%-weight forecasts and firms with under 3 staff are also set aside.
5. Weight: firms sit in 28 industry-by-size groups matched to national business employment shares. A group with 10% of employment and 10 replies thus gives each firm 1%, capping giants.
6. Average: results are employment-weighted means, published as 3-month averages with no seasonal adjustment stated. Monthly means of 3.6%, 3.8% and 3.7% thus publish as 3.70% for the 3 months to March.