📉 2022 has been the worst year for real wage growth in nearly half a century, a study says
Workers have been “brutally exposed” as the cost of living has soared this year, adding the current wave of industrial action is the result of workers “being pushed to breaking point” by years of pay austerity.
This can be traced back to the financial crisis of 2008 and the associated recession which caused much damage to UK public finances with the first austerity measures introduced late that year. As a result, the Labour government in power under leader Gordon Brown, cut borrowing and introduced spending cuts including a public sector pay freeze for one year.
Two years later, under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, George Osborne, former Chancellor, announced in a 2010 ‘emergency budget’ that public sector workers would face yet another pay freeze – this time for two years. Now, the most recent data from ONS shows that average regular pay growth for the private sector was 6.6 per cent in July to September 2022, and 2.2 per cent for the public sector; outside of the height of the pandemic period, this is the largest difference between the private and public sector.
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