Rising employment fails again to boost wages
This story makes me reflect that some of the lowest wages are in rural England – it tells us:
Unemployment fell last month as Britain’s economy added jobs at an unprecedented pace, according to official figures. But the recovery failed to lift wages by more than a fraction, leaving workers suffering another real-terms cut in living standards.
The jobless rate fell to 6.5% of the workforce, while the number of people in work edged higher to a fresh record of 30.6 million. The proportion of those aged 16 to 64 in work reached 73.1% in the three months to May, a rate only equalled before in 2004-5 and in 1974.
But a 0.7% rise in wages, excluding bonuses, was well short of the 1.5% May inflation rate. With bonuses factored in, wage growth was only 0.3%.
Average wage rises have remained stubbornly below inflation during the recovery and forecasters have repeatedly predicted an imminent return to above-inflation rises in wages over the last year only for each month’s official figures to prove them wrong. A rise in inflation last month to 1.9% and the fall in total average wage increases from 0.8% to 0.3% appeared to show the situation worsening.