Revised figures put pay deals at 3.2%

With three months of the payround gone the median from the LRD Payline database appears to be settling at 3.2%. Whilst this is the overall median there are some variations with the private sector median at 3.2%, the public sector at 3.0%, manual workers at 3.3% but non-manuals at 3.0%.

Industrial Relations Services report a median of 3.0% for the three months to October while Incomes Data Services give a median for the third quarter of 3.3%.

Prices

The latest inflation figures show the all-items RPI down to 2.6% for the year to October compared with the 2.8% for the year to September. The underlying rate also dropped, to 2.7% from the previous month's 2.8%. Forecasts for the fourth quarter of 2004 are that all items RPI will be 2.9% but the underlying rate will only increase by 2.4%.

Average weekly earnings

We have replaced our former table listing earnings broken down into manual/non-manual, etc with one based on major occupational groups. This is because National Statistics no longer present data on the former basis. The new table uses figures from the New Earnings Survey of April 2003 uprated by the increase in the Average Earnings Index from April to September 2003.