rural wages

Depressing stuff this – particularly when we reflect on the fact that rural wages are lower and rural living costs higher like for like than urban ones…

Britain has suffered a bigger fall in real wages since the financial crisis than any other advanced country apart from Greece, research shows.

A report by the TUC, published on Wednesday, shows that real earnings have declined more than 10% since the credit crunch began in 2007, leaving the UK equal bottom in a league table of wages growth.

Using data from the OECD’s recent employment outlook, the TUC found that over the same 2007-2015 period, real wages grew in Poland by 23%, in Germany by 14%, and in France by 11%. Across the OECD, real wages increased by an average of 6.7%.

The TUC found that between 2007 and 2015 in the UK, real wages – income from work adjusted for inflation – fell by 10.4%. That drop was equalled only by Greece in a list of 29 countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The UK, Greece and Portugal were the only three OECD countries that saw real wages fall.

…and rural places have the lowest workplace wages…

Unemployment fell to a five-year low in April but Britain’s workers were squeezed by a dramatic slowdown in pay growth, according to official figures.

A record rise in the number of people in work saw the jobless rate drop to 6.6% in the three months to April, reaching a level last seen in January 2009.

George Osborne hailed the progress as an important step towards the goal of full employment, while the chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, said: “Britain is bouncing back.”

But the Labour party and trade unions pointed to a fall in workers’ standard of living, as the figures also showed that pay growth fell to 0.7%, sharply down from 1.7% the month before and well below inflation, running at 1.8%.

At the RSN seminar in Shrewsbury on Tuesday and in an interview for AgeUK Radio today I found myself suggesting that the economy is broken more than “officialdom” wants to let on and then discussing the negative effects it is having on rural dwellers. This article – which if you go to it direct has a wonderful social commentary picture – reinforces my point. In reading it please remember that it costs about 20% more to live in rural than urban England. It tells us:

Britain’s workers are suffering the most protracted squeeze on their incomes since the long depression of the 1870s and are now well into their fourth year of falling real wages.

High inflation and stagnant pay for many workers mean that real wages have now fallen for 40 months, according to calculations by the TUC. It says that is the longest such stretch of financial pain since 1875 to 1878, when the world economy was mired in the so-called long depression.

The union group’s calculations, based on Bank of England data, followed news on Tuesday that inflation rose to its highest level for more than a year in June. The consumer prices measure of inflation hit 2.9% and many economists expect it to push higher still in coming months posing a challenge for the new Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, and his fellow policymakers as they look for ways to boost Britain’s fragile recovery while keeping a lid on living costs.

The TUC’s general secretary, Frances O’Grady, said the rise was “further bad news for households and the wider economy” and mean pay, currently rising at an average annual 1.3%, had failed to keep pace with prices for more than three-and-a-half years.