By David Milliken
LONDON, April 26 (Reuters) - British employers agreed
average pay rises of 6% with their staff in the first quarter of
2023, matching the record raises seen in data for the three
months to January and February, industry figures showed on
Wednesday.
The median 6% pay rise is the highest in data going back
more than 30 years from human resources company XpertHR. The
company said the first-quarter data was based on 272 salary
reviews covering 510,000 employees.
"Although pay rises continue to reach record levels, UK
employees will still feel the financial squeeze as inflation
remains above expectations," said Sheila Attwood, senior content
manager at XpertHR.
Consumer price inflation dropped to 10.1% in March from
10.4% in February, but was above where the Bank of England
forecast it would be earlier this year.
The most recent official wage data showed that average
weekly earnings excluding bonuses in the three months to
February were 6.6% higher than a year earlier, the same as in
January.
April is a key month for pay deals between workers and
employers, and comes at a time when many public sector workers
are taking strike action.
"Tensions between employers and employees will be
heightened, particularly in the public sector," Attwood said.
"Real-term wages are set to shrink and employers can expect
workers to maintain their push for raises to shield themselves
from rising living cost."
The BoE forecasts inflation will fall sharply over the rest
of this year, as energy prices have fallen and other price
pressures are easing.
But the BoE's chief economist, Huw Pill, said in a podcast
released on Tuesday that both businesses and employees would
need to reconcile themselves to a real-terms fall in their
profits and earnings before inflation could be fully tamed.
"What we're facing now is that reluctance to accept that,
yes, we're all worse off and have to take our share," Pill said
on the podcast produced by Columbia University's law school.
(Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by Emelia
Sithole-Matarise)
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