UK productivity fails to pick up in second quarter - ONS

LONDON (Reuters) - British workers' productivity failed to pick up in the second quarter of this year despite strong economic growth, though stagnant wages kept a related measure of inflation pressures in check, official data showed on Wednesday.

Output per hour worked was unchanged in the second quarter compared with the first three months of 2014 and was 0.3 percent lower than a year before, the Office for National Statistics said.

British productivity has been weak since the start of the recovery, with record gains in employment outstripping rapid economic growth.

The Bank of England has been forecasting that productivity will recover as the recovery gathers steam, though it does not expect productivity this year to rise by more than 0.25 percent.

Unit labour costs -- a measure of how much employers must pay for a given amount of output, and a gauge of underlying inflation pressures -- recorded their biggest annual fall in almost three years, dropping by 1.1 percent.

The BoE has said it is unlikely to raise interest rates before there are signs that wages are starting to rise faster.

(Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by Janet Lawrence)