Real terms average pay lower in most UK local authorities than in 2008, TUC finds

A TUC march against austerity in 2012. The union body estimates the average UK worker would be £10,400 a year better off if real wages had grown at their pre-2008 trend. Photograph: Warrick Page/Getty Images

Pay packets are smaller than they were in 2008 in most local authority areas in the UK, according to analysis by the Trades Union Congress, which described the findings as a “damning indictment” of the Conservatives’ economic record.

The TUC, which includes 48 unions with more than five million members, said stagnating wages meant British workers were in the midst of the longest squeeze on wages since the Napoleonic era.