Wages rise AGAIN for millions of workers – what it means for you
WAGES are continuing to rise for millions of workers across the UK.
Official figures released today by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revealed that basic pay is still growing at its fastest rate on record.
Growth in employees’ average total pay, including bonuses, was 6.9% and growth in regular pay, excluding bonuses, was 7.3% in March to May 2023.
This, along with last month, is the joint highest rate since records began in 2001.
It comes after last month the ONS revealed growth in total pay was 6.5% and growth in regular pay was 7.2% among employees in February to April 2023.
The fresh figures mean it’s good news for households who are battling rising costs due to high inflation.
The UK’s current rate of inflation remains high at 8.7%.
The Bank of England has blamed rising wages for keeping inflation high and for causing the regular increase in its base rate.
Darren Morgan, director of economic statistics at the ONS, said: “Pay excluding bonuses has again risen at record levels in cash terms.
“Due to high inflation, however, the real value of weekly earnings are still falling, although now at its slowest rate since the end of 2021.”
After taking inflation into account, average pay including bonuses fell by 1.2% in the year to March to May 2023, or 0.8% excluding bonuses.
That means people’s pay packets have fallen in real-terms, when factoring in other living costs such as food and energy.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for March to May 2023 increased by 0.2 percentage points on the quarter to 4% from 3.8%.
According to the ONS, this increase was driven by people unemployed for up to 12 months.
Most economists had predicted a reading of 3.8% for the latest quarter.
There were 1,034,000 million job vacancies on average across April to June 2023 – down 85,000 on the previous three months.
What does it mean for my money?
The main concern when workers see a “real-terms” fall in their salary is that it is not keeping pace with the cost of living.
Wage growth is still behind inflation as prices of everything from groceries to energy bills increase at a faster rate.
Official food inflation figures slipped from 19.1% to 18.4% in May, but that just means they’re still rising – but at a slower rate.
But prices are still considerably higher than they were at the start of 2022, with bread and butter more than 20% more expensive.
It means you will be feeling the pinch as your income doesn’t go as far and may end up struggling to pay your bills.