Pay awards with effective dates in the three months to the end of May 2015 were worth a median 2%, according to the latest data from pay monitors, XpertHR. Increases have been stuck at this level for 14 consecutive rolling quarters, the longest period of pay stability since 2006. There are few signs of any great movement in awards for the rest of this year: private sector employers surveyed by XpertHR at the beginning of 2015 predicted pay awards would average 2%.
Wage settlements are concentrated around the median – the middle half of awards are worth between 1.3% and 2.5%, a very tight interquartile range. Higher pay awards remain rare; less than one in ten were worth more than 3% a year. There is little difference in the settlements being agreed by manufacturing and private sector services organisations, with both sectors reaching median settlements of 2%.
Very few pay freezes were monitored in the latest quarter and the public sector continues to lag behind the private, with a median settlement level of 1.5% in the 12 months to the end of May 2015.
XpertHR’s Pay and Benefits editor Sheila Attwood said:
‘We expect the stability in the level of pay awards to remain, with 2% likely to be the going rate for pay awards through to the end of the year. With RPI inflation forecast to remain below this level in 2015, employees will continue to receive a real-terms increase in wages.’