A curve this steep, long yields trading far above the short-term policy-linked rate, usually points to one of two things. Either investors expect growth or inflation to run hotter further out, or they expect the central bank to have already cut as much as it safely can. Given the wage and inflation data landing the same week, the second explanation looks more persuasive.#

The GUS wage release for August shows average gross pay in the enterprise sector rising 5.6% year on year to PLN 9,259.54. That is not a print that argues for aggressive disinflation from the labour side. Add the desk's reading from 18 September, when CPI at 3.4% and a proposed fuel-tax holiday through March 2027 were already complicating the case for further NBP easing. The wage number reinforces that concern rather than easing it.#

Construction output adds a genuine counter-signal, but a narrower one. Output fell 0.6% month on month in August, undershooting expectations, even as the year-on-year comparison stayed clearly positive. That is softening momentum in one sector, not proof the broader disinflation case has firmed. One construction print does not offset a wage number running above 5%.#

A record term spread over WIBOR is the bond market pricing that the Council has less room to cut than Warsaw's bank stocks assume.#

WIG-BANKI has still not walked back its rate-cut bet. The index moved just 0.08% over the five sessions to 18 September, essentially flat, which after weeks of gains reads as a pause rather than a reversal. The broader WIG20 similarly held near flat, up 0.33% over the same window. Neither index has repriced against the record term spread yet. That is the asymmetry worth watching: bank equities carry duration-sensitive earnings assumptions that a steepening curve, if it reflects a stalled cutting cycle rather than a temporary term-premium quirk, would eventually force to reprice lower, particularly for the rate-sensitive names in that index.#

One wire's framing that the bond market is already 'booming' off this spread, attributed to Moody's commentary tied to the EUR/PLN move, is a characterisation from a single account. It should be read as such, not as settled fact. The steepening itself, sourced from two reports and matched against the desk's own record-high framing, is the harder evidence.#

What tests this read next is the NBP's own projection cycle. The March round already assumed CPI stays above the 3.5% upper band through the end of 2026 before returning to the 2.5% point target in mid-2027; that round predates the fuel-cap expiry and is due for revision. If the next projection pushes the return-to-target date further out, the record term spread will look prescient. If it instead holds the mid-2027 timeline, the case for further imminent cuts, and for WIG-BANKI's current pricing, survives this challenge.#