By Angela Monaghan and Edmund Conway
Telegraph
The Office for National Statistics said average weekly earnings fell 5.8pc compared with the same month last year, to £459.10. The private sector took the full force of the fall in weekly earnings, down sharply by 7.7pc at £463.50, while average weekly earnings in the public sector actually rose by 3.2pc to £442.90. Bonuses in the financial services fell to £549.90 a week in February – which is part of the peak period for bonus payments – from £1,312.80.
“We certainly haven’t seen anything like this in the last 60 years – and probably not in peacetime since the 1930s. In that sense it’s much like everything else in the economy,” said Michael Saunders, chief UK economist at Citigroup.
According to the ONS data, it is only the second month of falls during the current downturn, after weekly wages fell 1.9pc in January compared with a year earlier. The falls partly reflect moves by some private sector employees to freeze wages and even cut pay as they struggle to keep jobs and stay afloat during the recession.
However, Mr Saunders said that the figures did not look as negative when bonus payments were excluded. “Indeed, after bonus period you may see earnings go slightly into positive territory.”
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has on the other hand argued that with price deflation already a reality, the chances are that pay excluding bonuses will show “a further marked slump in the coming months”.
Read the full article on the Telegraph.
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