UK sees dip in weekly card spending and restaurant bookings – ONS

LONDON (Reuters) – British consumers spent less on credit and debit cards and made fewer restaurant bookings than the week before, while job adverts showed a big increase, weekly figures collated by the Office for National Statistics showed on Thursday.

Spending on credit and debit cards – which is not adjusted for inflation or the time of year – fell 3 percentage points on the previous week to 101% of its February 2020 average, based on Bank of England CHAPS interbank payments for the week to May 19.

Restaurant bookings fell by 2 percentage points, according to OpenTable figures, and job adverts on the Adzuna recruitment website were 7% higher.

Economists are looking closely to see the extent to which surging inflation leads to a fall in Britons’ spending on non-essential goods and services.

(Reporting by David Milliken, editing by Andy Bruce)