One of the arguments for the public sector pay freeze made by Chancellor Rishi Sunak is that workers have been unfairly shielded from lacklustre or negative wage growth in the private economy.
This might be true for men, but it’s not the case for women. Women employed in the public sector have seen their real wages fall by 0.3 per cent since 2011, while in the private sector women’s wages have grown by 5.6 per cent, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Sunak has also argued that public sector workers earn a “premium” over those in the private sector.
While it is true that public sector workers on average earn 9 per cent more than private sector workers, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found that this is entirely explained by differences in employee attributes. Once the age, education and experience of employees is taken into account, the difference between public and private sector wages disappears.
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By their very nature, public sector pay freezes tend to impact women more than men. This is because close to two-thirds of public sector workers are women (65 per cent), ONS figures show. While around 16 per cent of male workers are employed by the state, for women the figure is one in three (32 per cent).
The figures are particularly skewed for health and education, where 76 per cent and 73 per cent of employees are women, respectively. While NHS workers are excluded from the pay freeze, the rise of just 1 per cent is likely to amount to a real-terms pay cut for many.
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