ONS data shows that private sector pay grew 6.9% between August and October 2022 while public sector pay grew 2.7%
While the government is doing its utmost to portray striking public sector workers as unreasonable in their demands, a damning chart shows just how far behind public sector wages have lagged behind private sector wages.
The chart has been produced by the FT. The paper reports: “Workers driving the UK’s worst wave of strike action in decades are concentrated in occupations where pay has suffered the sharpest squeeze during a prolonged stagnation in wages.”
The analysis of ONS data also revealed that some of the biggest declines in pay have affected relatively high earners, including doctors who have seen their average pay fall by almost 25 per cent in real terms between 2011 and 2020.
ONS data shows that private sector pay grew 6.9% between August and October 2022 while public sector pay grew 2.7%, and that this was among the largest differences ever seen between the two.
The government has worsened the plight of public sector workers through pay freezes or rises limited to 1% since 2010.
Such figures are always worth remembering, whenever the Tories try to pit striking workers against the rest of the public.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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