The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is encouraged by today’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures showing that both the gender pay gap and the pay divide between top and bottom earners narrowed slightly in the year to April 2007 in the United Kingdom.
But CIPD’s chief economist, Dr. John Philpott, explained further and faster progress is needed on both fronts while the ONS figures as a whole show that for most workers pay rises last year lagged well behind increased living costs.
Dr. Philpott continued as follows:
Pay Squeeze Confirmed
“Whichever way you cut the annual pay survey figures it is clear that the pay of most workers failed to match the surge in price inflation and other living costs in 2006 and early 2007. The median weekly earnings of full-time employees increased by just 2.9% and by only 2.8% on an hourly basis. Part timers fared better on a weekly basis (enjoying a median increase of 4.7%, with men doing particularly well at 8%) but still only received 3.8% more per hour. This most comprehensive of pay and hours surveys therefore confirms that conditions in the labor market by the start of 2007 were not tight enough to prevent a squeeze on real pay let alone trigger the kind of pay surge that was widely predicted.”
See full Article.
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