I was playing with some data this morning as a result of some work I am doing on wealth taxes. I looked at data on mean and median wages as a result. This is the latest data from the ONS, to March 2022, all stated in 2022 prices:
That virtual flat line since 2008 is staggering. There is such an obvious inflexion point around then, which can be so easily equated with the arrival of Osborne at the Treasury.
That median wages have risen more than mean wages can only be because of the impact of the minimum wage, in my opinion.
But this is a tale of time lost due to economic mismanagement.
However, it seems Labour has no intention of doing anything about this.
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Agreed.
It was under Labour that public sector final salary pensions scheme were turned into average salary pensions in 2003, no doubt in-keeping with the Tories PSBR ‘requirements’.
All Labour will do is adopt the Tory mechanisms they will inherit if they get in in 2024.
The question is, why would a winning party legitimise the work of the losing party?
When the Tories got in in 2010, they wasted no time destroying much good that New Labour did.
Why can’t Laboured and Stymied do the same to the OBR, free schools and all the other shite the Tories have bequeathed us?
Where is the real alternative that this country needs?
This might be the correct page, but it’s fairly impeneratably, and the graphs aren’t linkable to, and it only shows mean, not median:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/averageweeklyearningsingreatbritain/august2022
Did I miss the link? Apologies if so
Hardly surprising Labour isn’t arguing the case of flat wage growth to fight the BoE’s base rate inflation too busy partying with Rupert Murdoch!
https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2023/06/26/is-this-the-reason-a-labour-leader-has-attended-a-party-by-rupert-murdoch/
Thanks for that, I did wonder when Starmer would receive the ghastly diggers blessing, a la the warmonger B.Liar.
Thus what was a gradually regenerating Labour, first morphed into a vile-Liebore chrysalis and now has emerged fully formed as Nude-Liebore II, complete with Mandelson – then as now – a figure head (gargoyle?) at the front of the org.
Labour now scraps pledge to bring in rent controls in latest U-turn. State housing benefit to compensate for rent increases or not since balancing the state’s books are a Starmer objective!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-rent-controls-lisa-nandy-keir-starmer-b2365616.html
Staggering
What is left, as I asked in a recent tweet?
Well there was this, but that looks as if it is about to be abandoned too. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/28/keir-starmer-considers-ditching-labour-pledge-to-reinstate-dfid-international-development
It is impossible to believe anything that despicable man says.
Interesting. I was reading a research paper by the Rand Corporation yesterday looking at the growth in income of various groups of workers compared to economic growth in the US since 1975. It showed that there had been a transfer of income of $47 trillion over the period from those below the 90th percentile to those above. I’d be interested to see something similar for the UK.
Howard Reed might have this data
I haven’t
Osborne took over in 2010 not 2008. Just looking at the chart without the data, the median looks to grow from 2010 slightly slower – but…?
I did seem to remember the standard commentary was that earnings had begun to grow again after the 2008 crash but then Osborne squashed it afte 2010.
Yes…
Beware that UK is following the USA, see what you are heading for.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/06/low-wages-and-rising-cost-of-living-are-driving-more-into-homelessness-as-government-tries-to-hide-rather-than-solve-problem.html
“That median wages have risen more than mean wages can only be because of the impact of the minimum wage, in my opinion.”
Are you able to explain this comment? I am struggling slightly to appreciate why a minimum wage impacts the median rather than the mean?
Why when it means the bae rises pushing up rates above it as well?
A slightly different interpretation: the mean (average) is ‘distorted’ where you have concentrations of very high incomes. The median in the same area exposes the low incomes. Resolution have good data on this where they have done countrywide(I think) analysis. When I looked at it in somewhere like Carlisle (where I grew up), where there not many high incomes, the median and average are quite close. When you look at somewhere like Kensington and Chelsea there are big differences between the mean/average and the median with the average being significantly higher. Those concentrations of high incomes hide the levels of poverty when averages are used.
Something similar applies to house prices.
Not Teaching Grannie
Along with the mean and the medium goes the mode- the most frequent value.
It may turn out to be the pivot/tipping point when households admit that ‘putting up with things’ will not provide them with a roof over their head, a shirt on their back nor food in their belly while they wait for Pugwash Starmer to pull out his finger and stick it in the wind.
What about the divergence between Mean & Median which seems to have gone from about 10 to 20%?
Your guess is as good as mine
Did you also plot the mode average Richard?
I have always assumed that since the introduction of the minimum wage that it would become the mode average but I have never seen any evidence that either proves or disproves that theory.
That data is not provided
With increasing inequality growth at the top end raises the mean while the median can remain unchanged.
It’s hardly surprising that Labour are rowing back on plans to undo Tory damage to the country. If they put those into their manifesto they would (probably) assume that the vindictive Tory Establishment, spearheaded by the majority Tory media, having already shown contempt for the law, for democracy, for morality and truth, would embark on a ruthless campaign of lies, vilification and fear-mongering sufficient to dissuade an ignorant, gullible public from voting for a Labour government. The Tory government knows that it has the support, not only of a conservative Establishment and media, but by a conservative Monarchy, to whom every powerful element of society police, security service, armed forces, judiciary, civil service,
et al pledge allegiance. Tony Blair was elected because he made it clear that he was a safe, essentially benign Tory, happy to support their core ideology of transferring money from the government to big business.
Starmer and his advisers doubtless recognise this and are playing it very, very safe. Sadly, if elected he will probably continue down this safe road, and leave all the disastrous Tory policies in place, especially holding on to their ‘unaffordability/austerity’ nonsense