AVERAGE earnings are set to be £858 a year lower than previously thought by 2022 as workers “bear the brunt” of the Government’s economic mismanagement, Jeremy Corbyn is warning.
According to Labour analysis of official forecasts, the average worker is set to be £2,257 worse off by 2022 as a result of slower earnings growth.
The Labour leader will use a speech to party activists to claim Philip Hammond’s Budget was an “alarming expose” of Tory failure.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) downgraded forecasts for growth in average earnings every year from 2017/18 to 2021/22 in its analysis published as Mr Hammond delivered his tax and spending plans.
Labour’s analysis compared the forecasts from March with the updated version published on Wednesday and found that average earnings in 2021-22 are now expected to be £30,004 rather than the £30,862 implied by the earlier figures. Across the five-year period, the cumulative effect of the lower forecast earnings amounts to £2,257.
Mr Corbyn will tell Labour supporters in Plymouth the figures mean that in 2021-22 “for the last three weeks of that financial year, everybody on the National Living Wage in Britain will effectively be working for free as they are denied the earnings previously expected”.
“As the OBR says, it is workers who have to bear the brunt of the Government’s poor management of the economy. Despite the evidence, the Tories refuse to accept that cutting public services, holding wages down and refusing to invest is a recipe for failure.
“They cannot continue to tinker at the edges of an economy that is so completely broken.”
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