-XpertHR: Median UK Q2 employee weighted pay deals unchanged At 1.8%
LONDON (MNI) – With around three quarters of 2012 pay deals now
completed UK pay growth this year has been very subdued, with the median
employee weighted pay deal in the second quarter just 1.8%, unchanged
from the first quarter.
A survey from XpertHR found the unweighted median pay deal was
still only 2%. With the government keeping a tight rein on public pay
this is pushing down hard on overall weighted pay growth.
Sheila Attwood, XpertHR Pay and Benefits editor, said the Q2
employee weighted median pay deal reflected the April Stg250 increase
for the large numbers of National Health Service staff earning Stg21,000
or less.
The median unweighted Q2 private sector pay deal was 2.4%, compared
with zero for unweighted public sector pay.
The employee weighted figures are closer to the way the official
earnings data are constructed than the unweighted ones.
XpertHR also conducted a survey of manufacturing employers’
expectations for pay deals over the next 12 months. These showed the
median expectation was 2.5%, little changed from 2.6% over the past 12
months.
Attwood said manufacturers were looking at a variety of ways to
curb staff costs, such as reducing overtime, but only 13% of respondents
were planning to cut staffing levels.
“Companies seem to be doing everything they can to reduce the
number of redundancies,” she said.
The Bank of England estimates firms’ wage costs have been rising
by around 2% year-on-year so far in 2012, which is close to pre-crisis
norms, so the clamp down on costs is unsurprising.
–London newsroom: 0044-7862-7491 email: drobinson@marketnews.com
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