Pay settlements rise

The latest figures from the Labour Research Department’s Payline database of collective agreements show a median (midpoint) increase of 2.6% in the three months to January — up from 2.4% at the end of last year.

The welcome rise means that the gap between RPI inflation and settlements has closed, so living standards are not being hit as much.

The annual rate of inflation as measured by the Retail Prices Index (RPI) was 2.8% for the year to January, so the gap between settlements and prices has narrowed to 0.2 percentage points.

The midpoint rise for Payline settlements in the private sector was up from 2.3% to 2.6%.

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