Inflation, asserted Rishi Sunak in his first PMQs, makes us all poorer. That is not entirely true – people relying entirely on the state pension, for example, will be fully compensated for this year’s high inflation, and no doubt some of Sunak’s former colleagues in the hedge fund industry have found a way to profit, too. But generally, he is right. Working people have on the whole suffered a large drop in their real wages.
In the year to April, median weekly pay rose by 5 per cent from £610 to £640. In many years that would be a substantial rise, but when adjusted for inflation it comes out as a fall of 2.6 per cent.
Rishi Sunak has a huge task in convincing the electorate that his government is competent to run the economy
In fact, the situation is likely to be a little worse than these figures suggest because, as the ONS explains, this year’s figures are a little skewed by people returning to work after being on furlough.
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