More misreporting on public sector pay

Media Integrity

Right wing papers have reported a "record" gap between public and private sector earnings. But this includes nationalised banks - the gap shrinks without them.

A range of right wing commentators and newspapers have been keen to highlight that yesterday’s labour market statistics identified a “record” gap between public and private sector earnings.

The Telegraph tells us that:

“This is the first time that the gap, which has slowly widened under the Labour Government, has hit more than £2,000 … this gap of 3.6 percentage points is the widest ever recorded by the ONS.”

And that:

“Nurses, teachers, civil servants and other public workers [were] enjoying an average annual pay rise of 3.8 per cent in the three months to the end of November.”

However, this refers to public sector earnings including financial services (i.e. nationalised banks). When you look at the public sector earnings excluding financial services the gap shrinks to 2.7 percentage points. Over a quarter of the rise that is being reported is a result of rising earnings for bankers.

This is still an earnings gap between the sectors, but not an historic one. As has been regularly highlighted the earnings differential can be accounted for by the composition of the workforce (there are more professionals in the public sector), the fact that the lowest paid workers get paid more in public sector jobs and the diverse performance of earnings in the private sector (for example earnings in distribution, hotels and restaurants rose by 1.8 per cent on the year, and in manufacturing by 1.9 per cent). Ben Goldacre has more on some of the other problems in these kinds of comparisons. At the very least, those who seek to criticise the public sector should get their facts right.

Our guest writer is Nicola Smith, Senior Policy Officer on economic and social affairs at the TUC.

No related posts.

22 Responses to “More misreporting on public sector pay”

  1. Alice Pilia

    RT @leftfootfwd The public sec pay "gap" identified in press includes salaries in nat'd banks http://bit.ly/6DJrFd <

  2. Adam Bienkov

    RT @leftfootfwd The public sec pay "gap" identified in press includes salaries in nat'd banks http://bit.ly/6DJrFd

  3. Anon E Mouse

    Nicola – The thing is the private sector produces the monies that pay for the public sector.

    As Senior Policy Officer at the TUC I’m surprised you haven’t commented on the fact that some public servants earn more than the Prime Minister which, despite his obvious shortcomings and ineffective ability to do that job, is surely a more relevant point for the TUC.

    People in the UK have serious reservations about the fact our country seems to be reliant on either service industry jobs and the growth, particularly under this current government, of the public sector.

    The private sector is a contributor to this countries growth and needs to be encouraged and supported by everyone, including the TUC.

    If not where will the money in this country come from?

  4. Martin McIvor

    RT @leftfootfwd: The public sector pay "gap" identified in the right-wing press includes salaries in nationalised banks http://bit.ly/6DJrFd

  5. More misreporting on public sector pay | ToUChstone blog: A public policy blog from the TUC

    […] being mentioned is only half the story though. Nicola has a blog post up at Left Foot Forward, filling us in on the half that hasn’t been reported. Related posts (automatically […]

Comments are closed.