Basic pay drops at fastest rate in a decade

When adjusted for inflation, regular pay has fallen roughly by 1.6% for private sector workers and 4.5% for those in the public sector.

Between February and April 2022, pay excluding bonuses fell 2.2% from the same period a year earlier when adjusted for inflation, the ONS said.

However, pay including bonuses is staying ahead of price hikes, increasing by 0.4% when inflation is considered.

Sam Beckett, head of economic statistics at the ONS, said a “high level of bonuses” was continuing to “cushion the effects of rising prices on total earnings for some workers”.

"But if you exclude bonuses, pay in real terms is falling at its fastest rate in over a decade," she added.

Some institutions have come under fire, as the Trades Union Congress (TUC) found that bonuses in the financial and insurance sectors increased by 27.9% over the last year – six times quicker than wages in the same period.

“There is no justification for such obscene City bonuses at the best of times – let alone during a cost-of-living crisis,” the TUC’s general secretary Frances O’Grady commented.

“While City executives rake it in, millions are struggling to keep their heads above water. Ministers have no hesitation in calling for public sector pay restraint but turn a blind eye to shocking City excess.”

Chancellor Rishi Sunak pointed to unemployment figures, as the number of UK job vacancies in the UK rose to a new record of 1.3 million from March to May 2022.

The unemployment rate was 3.8% from February to April 2022, up slightly from the preceding month. Sunak said the UK job market “remains robust” with redundancies at an all-time low.

However, as the UK’s economy shrank by 0.3%, Labour’s Jonathan Ashworth contested “millions in work are in poverty” with ministers demonstrating “utter complacency about the huge levels of economic inactivity”.