London workers are £50,000 worse since 2010 due to wage stagnation, Sadiq Khan report claims
Workers in London are £50,000 worse off since 2010 due to “scandalous” poor wage growth over the past decade, according to a new report.
An analysis from London Mayor Sadiq Khan suggested that workers in the capital have lost thousands of pounds every year as their salaries have failed to keep pace with inflation.
In April 2022, the annual salary for employees in London after accounting for inflation was £36,700, but the research, by economists from the Greater London Authority, found that if annual wage growth after 2010 had followed the same trend from the decade before, the average pay for workers in the capital would have been £47,600.
The cumulative impact of year-on-year poor wage growth amounts to nearly £50,000 since 2010, said the report.
He called for the Government to take urgent measures including increasing the supply of affordable housing in London as well as spending on research and development, transport and infrastructure.
He said: “It is absolutely scandalous that millions of people in London and around the country have effectively become poorer over the last decade, losing out on up to £50,000, because their wages have not kept up with cost of living under the current Government.
“While the focus throughout this awful cost-of-living crisis has quite rightly been on rising food and energy prices, the Government should have done much more to tackle sluggish wage growth, which harms millions of people.
“London is the engine of the UK economy – and when the capital succeeds so does the rest of the country. That is why we need to see the Government urgently invest in the capital and turbo-boost productivity and wages.
“This has been a lost decade of wage growth. The Government needs to take immediate action to buck the trend and help put more money in the pockets of hard-working people.”
Press Association – Alan Jones