Britain’s workers suffered the sharpest fall in real wages during 2022 in almost half a century, an analysis of official statistics by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has discovered.
Twitter screenshot of TUC account.
© Photo : Twitter
The last time real wage growth was this bad was in 1977, according to the data, cited by UK media outlets. British families’ household budgets have been shredded by soaring energy bills and a real wage squeeze as salaries have failed to keep pace with inflation.
'Badge of Shame'
People’s earnings compared to their cost of living plummeted by an average of £76 a month in 2022. UK residents employed in the public sector currently have £180 a month less to spend on their household needs in real terms than a year ago.
Nurses, for example, are earning an annual £5,000 less in real terms than they were in 2010, the union body stated.
“People should be able to look forward to Christmas without having to worry about how they'll pay for it. But family budgets have been shredded by soaring bills and more than a decade of pay being held down,” TUC's general secretary, Frances O’Grady, said.
The Conservative government was slammed as having presided over the longest real wage squeeze in over 200 years, with the TUC dubbing it a "badge of shame."
“The Tories’ failure to get pay rising has left millions of households brutally exposed to the cost of living emergency. It’s time to reward work — not wealth. We cannot be a country where NHS and teaching staff have to use foodbanks, while City bankers are given unlimited bonuses,” O’Grady said.
In the UK, inflation hit a 41-year high of 11.1 percent in October, while food and energy costs showed no sign of abandoning their upward trend.
The household budget squeeze is being blamed for Britain’s worst spate of strike action in recent years, with mass stoppages gripping the railways, and strikes also launched by postal workers at Royal Mail, and mulled by nurses and ambulance staff of the National Health Service (NHS).
According to calculations cited in media reports, an estimated over one million working days are expected to be lost due to the wave of industrial action in the UK.
Pay austerity is what led the workers to be "pushed to breaking point,” the union underscored, adding:
“If there are strikes across different sectors this winter the government only have themselves to blame.”