Last week, the TUC released a damning report on the drastic decline in real wages in the UK in the wake of the financial crisis. The findings, to me, are staggering.
The report, which compared real wage change and employment rate change across OECD countries, found that real wages in the UK fell by 10.4% between 2007 and 2015, a decline only matched by Greece.
Comparatively, the average change in wages across OECD countries was an increase of 6.7%. The UK, Greece, and Portugal were the only countries to see a fall in real wages eight years after the financial crisis.
While a Treasury spokesperson said that the analysis ignored the UK’s growth in employment, a number of OECD countries, including Poland, Germany, Estonia, and Hungary saw real wages grow while also increasing employment at a higher rate than in the UK. Germany, a country with an economy of comparable size to the UK, saw wages rise by 13.9% since the financial crisis, while also increasing employment by more than eight times that of the UK.
This report provides clear evidence that the Tory agenda of austerity has failed. Real wages have declined at a shocking rate, while employment has barely crept up. Meanwhile, the most vulnerable in society have paid the highest price for the greed of the banks.
The full statistics used in the report can be found here: https://www.tuc.org.uk/economic-issues/labour-market/uk-workers-experienced-sharpest-wage-fall-any-leading-economy-tuc