Britain’s job dissatisfaction hits record high as pay inequality widens
A British Social Attitudes survey finds workers unhappier at work than ever recorded, while new data shows pay inequality rising for the first time in a decade.
Britain is more dissatisfied at work than at any point since records began, according to the British Social Attitudes survey, the long-running annual study of public opinion. Its latest report, published today, finds growing discontent among employees who complain about inflexible working hours, limited career progression and, above all, stagnant pay.
The economic picture behind those complaints is stark. The economist Paul Johnson described the decade-long stagnation in pay as unprecedented since the Napoleonic era, before correcting himself to say that it was unprecedented ever. Alongside that slowdown, pay inequality has increased over the past year for the first time in a decade, according to the Resolution Foundation’s Mike Brewer.
Brewer’s analysis shows a widening gap between the highest and lowest earners. Pay for the top 10 per cent rose by 7.3 per cent over the last year, while pay for the bottom 10 per cent rose by just 1.1 per cent. The divergence reflects two trends: the national living wage has stopped rising faster than median pay, and top earnings have resumed their growth. For workers near the bottom of the pay scale, that means a minimum wage floor that is no longer pulling the typical wage packet ahead of the middle of the market.
The survey findings and the pay figures describe the same pressure from different angles. Workers report that their pay is not keeping pace and that their working lives offer little room for advancement or flexibility. Taken together, the data suggests that the gains from recent years have been concentrated at the top of the earnings distribution rather than spread across the workforce.
Polly Toynbee, the Guardian columnist, uses these figures to argue for the workers’ rights protections that Labour fought to secure, which she describes as hard-won. She contrasts that agenda with the position of Kemi Badenoch and the business lobby, whom she accuses of wanting to take Britain backwards by rolling those protections back. In her view, the survey results and the pay data both point towards strengthening rights at work rather than weakening them, and policy should respond to the evidence instead of retreating from it.
Source: theguardian.com
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