Britons’ spending capacity is declining at a frightening pace as wages are outstripped by runaway inflation.
Regular pay decreased by 3 per cent in real terms in the quarter to June, the most destructive since comparable records started in 2001. Including bonus earnings were down 2.5 per cent.
Using the headline CPI inflation rate that doesn’t include housing costs the situation was even more alarming, with a 4.1 per cent drop in regular pay and 3.6 per cent in total pay.
Meanwhile, there are worrying signs that the employment market is slowing down, with vacancies declining for the first time since 2020, albeit from record levels.
In cash terms wages are going up sharply, by 5.1 per cent for total and 4.7 for regular pay, but inflation is swelling even quicker, with fears figures will show CPI in double digits and prompt the Bank of England to push up interest rates again.
CPI inflation struck a new 40-year record of 9.4 per cent in June and is predicted to rise to about 11 per cent later this year.
The ONS said the number of UK workers on payroll increased by 73,000 between June and July to 29.7 million.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate rose to 3.8 per cent for the quarter compared with 3.7 per cent for the earlier period.
Vacancy numbers hit 1.274 million over the three months from May to July, dropping by 19,800 in the first signal the UK’s hot labour market could be cooling.
ONS director of economic statistics Darren Morgan said that the number of people in work grew in the second quarter of 2022, whilst the headline rates of unemployment and of people neither working nor looking for a job were little changed, and he said that the total number of hours worked each week seems to have stabilised very little below pre-pandemic levels, and that redundancy was still at extremely low levels.
He also said that the number of job vacancies remained historically very high, it fell for the first time since the summer of 2020, but that the real value of pay continues to decline, and he said that excluding bonuses, it’s still falling faster than at any time since comparable records began in 2001.
Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi said that the stats indicate that the jobs market is in a powerful position, with unemployment lower than at almost any point in the past 40 years, which is good news in what are difficult times for people.
Of course, we shouldn’t be overlooking the furlough for COVID and with that, there was always going to be a price to pay, along with Brexit which is like a weight tied to a swimmer’s foot, and its effects will be felt for years to come, and denying this is simply denying the truth.
The United Kingdom is plunging into the sea with the weight of too many people living here with the fat and greedy bleeding everyone dry, and if you go into shops there are more and more shelf serve tills with hardly any attendants. Ultimately, everything will be manned by robots and machines. Some call it progress, but it looks like the human race is committed to making itself redundant, and the Terminator movie is beginning to look a lot like a prophecy, not a fantasy.
The Tories have destroyed this country and it’s time they were voted out. They’re wealthy snobs who have no idea of the struggles we all face every day.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 