1% cap bites — or should that be sucks?


The government’s 1% pay cap continues to have a marked impact on earnings in the civil service. 


Over the year to 31 March 2015 median gross annual earnings rose by exactly 1.0% to £24,980. That figure excludes overtime or one-off bonuses, and the median varies regionally from £31,580 in London to £19,970 in the North East. 


Changes in the make-up of the workforce have some impact on this. On one hand, overall salary levels would tend to rise because the number in lower-paid administrative grades fell (by over 10,000) as employment in higher-paid grades went up. But on the other hand, the number of full-timers fell by 4,996 (1.5%) to 327,696, while the number working part-time rose by 4,377 to 111,627 (4.1%) potentially pushing salaries down. Overall employment fell by 0.1% to 439,300 (in 2010 it was 527,500).


The gender pay gap has narrowed. However, the improvement was confined to full-timers, where the gap narrowed from 11.0% to 9.8%, while it widened for part-timers from 14.2% to 15.7%.


www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/pse/civil-service-statistics/2015/stb-civil-service-statistics-2015.html