Just under a third of employers are under no pressure from employees to increase wages, despite a fall in real earnings in 2017, according to the latest labour market outlook report from the CIPD. Employers in retail, administrative and support services, and professional, scientific and technical services, are the sub-sectors most likely to report they are under no pressure to increase wages, the data suggests. Public sector employers are under pressure, however, ‘which may partly reflect the recent debate about the scrapping of the public sector pay cap’, the CIPD speculates. Almost 60% of public sector organisations report they are under ‘some’ or ‘significant’ pressure to raise wages for the majority of the workforce. In addition, a quarter state they are under pressure to raise wages for certain roles.
In the private sector, construction employers are more likely than average to report pressure – almost four in ten organisations report some or significant pressure. The most commonly given reason for not feeling under pressure to raise wages is ‘recognition among our employees that the business or organisation cannot afford more generous pay increases’. Other reasons for the absence of pay pressure include ‘our organisation has above-market pay rates’ and ‘many workers are still grateful for a job’.