UK workers suffered the biggest fall in their real pay for nearly nine years as the cost-of-living squeeze tightened, according to official figures. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said regular pay excluding bonuses tumbled 1.8 per cent in the three months to February when taking soaring inflation into account, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) – the steepest fall since August to October 2013.
The ONS said real pay was now “falling noticeably”, with figures for February alone showing regular wages dropped 2.1 per cent after inflation, which was the biggest drop since August 2013, the ONS added. When compared with CPIH, which includes owner occupiers’ housing costs and is the ONS’s preferred measure of inflation, real regular wages fell one per cent in the three months to February.
While pay rose four per cent in the quarter, it was far outstripped by inflation and experts have warned wages will lag even further behind rising prices this year as inflation is expected to rocket in the autumn. Chancellor Rishi Sunak said the Government was “helping to cushion the impacts of global price rises through more then £22 billion of support for the cost of living this financial year”.
