British households are only halfway through a two-year cost of living crisis, with average incomes likely to fall by more than £2,000, a leading thinktank has warned.

Typical disposable incomes for working-age family households are on track to fall by 3% in this financial year, and by 4% in the year to April 2024, according to the Resolution Foundation.

Only incomes of the very richest will rise, according to the thinktank’s annual Living Standards Outlook for 2023, while middle-income households will struggle to make ends meet after an average £2,100 loss.

The warning comes amid a rash of strikes by workers demanding pay rises closer to the average inflation rate of 10.7%.

A vote by teachers is expected to back strike action when the ballot results are announced over the next fortnight, adding more than 500,000 public sector workers to a tally that includes nurses, Whitehall civil servants and Border Force staff.

Median household disposable income stood at £25,600 for the 2014-15 financial year, according to the Office for National Statistics.

This is slightly above its pre-downturn level of £25,400 and 6.5pc above its post-crisis low.

The experimental data, which were adjusted for inflation and household size, suggest that disposable incomes have finally surpassed their pre-crisis peak.

However, the figures also showed retired people were more likely to feel the benefit than those of working age.

Income for retired households grew further above its pre-crash high of £19,300 to £21,100 in real terms. But median income for working age households stood at £28,100 – £800 below the pre-crisis high of £28,900.

Adam Corlett, an analyst at the Resolution Foundation think tank, said the figures, which include pay and earnings from state benefits and investments, illustrated “how the downturn has been felt very differently across generations”.