Figures showing public sector workers earn 8% on average more than their private sector "counterparts" is a political hand grenade that should go off in the face of all those who claim it to be true. That's the message from pay experts at Income Data Services, who argue the like-for-like claims by the Office for National Statistics, even with a welter of caveats thrown in, are farcical.
The two sides of the employment divide, if we must view the debate in such terms, are a world away from each other. Two-thirds of public sector workers are women, compared to 41% in the private sector. Public sector workers are older and have higher qualifications. Because they work in areas such as nursing and teaching, they stay for a long time and build up skills and salary levels.
There is also the fact that the public sector makes up only 20% of the workforce.
IDS researcher Alastair Hatchett says if the public sector is compared with the financial and business services sector, which also accounts for 20% of the economy, it would fare badly – and that is without the £20bn of bonuses that the ONS excludes from its calculation and that would mostly be paid to workers in the City, to accountants, to lawyers and other business services staff.
Then there are the private sector workers at the other end of the spectrum, giving their all in shops, hotels and restaurants (which represents 23% of employment). They are paid shockingly low wages and would easily claim a huge income gap with the public sector average.
Yet despite the mismatch of ages, skills, qualifications and types of job carried out by the public sector, the ONS persists in perpetuating myths. It is hard to see how that furthers public debate on the subject of pay.
