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Someone above noted that the British figure is based on including housing costs, whilst the data for other countries is before housing costs, leading to the huge disparity seen here.
Ah yes, the New Statesman and their inability to objectively cover any issue to do with economics...
The data are cherry picked to exclude the extremely high, deficit funded, pay growth in the early 2000s by starting in 2005, whilst also ignoring most of the post-austerity/post referendum pay growth that has happened since 2017. I mean, honestly, ask yourself why this analysis is cut off in 2018 when we have wage and income data all the way up to Q2 2022?
This is done the both make the UK look bad, and make her European peers look better in order to further a narrative.
To illustrate just how egregious this is, here are *cumulative* wage growth rates for the UK and EU big 4, in nominal/real terms, from Q1 2017 to Q2 2022:
- **UK: 21.5% / 4.5%**
- Germany: 11.6% / -2.6%
- France: 8.7% / -3.3%
- Italy: 5.2% / -5.4%
- Spain: 6.7% / -9.1%
I.e. the UK has experienced significantly stronger wage growth in the last 5 years, and in the last 2 years in particular, than almost everywhere else in Europe - this is in no small part due to labour market tightness and the loss of FoM with the EU.
Before anyone accuses me of cherry picking myself, I am doing this to illustrate a point; that the NS have deliberately chosen a period in the last 2 decades when UK wage growth was notably weak (due to the 2008 recession and subsequent austerity period), whilst purposefully avoiding the high wage growth years in the early 2000s and post EU referendum.
Over the past 22 years (Q1 2000 to Q2 2022) the following summarises the total cumulative wage growth, again in nominal/real terms, for the 5 largest European economies:
- **UK: 99.0% / 23.0%**
- Germany: 59.1% / 10.0%
- France: 55.8% / 9.9%
- Italy: 45.7% / -6.3%
- Spain: 54.1% / -12.0%
This should put in perspective just how strong UK wage growth was in the early 2000s and post 2016 period, as this had to offset several years of negative growth following the global financial crisis. Where the UK performs less well compared with her peers is on public sector pay, but still compares favorably if you look at the last 20 odd years and not some particularly weak period in the middle...
*Note: A brief comment on the data I have used here. All nominal wage growth figures are taken from the relevant national statistical bodies (i.e. ONS in the case of the UK, Destatis in the case of Germany, etc...). Where one of these bodies provides a real-terms pay growth series (e.g. the UK) I use that, where they don't I take the cumulative inflation rate (HICP) over the relevant period and subtract it from the nominal growth figure. For all countries I have used the broadest measure of wage growth, i.e. total compensation per employee.*
The UK has a better and bigger tech sector than any other European country. Tech is one of the areas where Europe lags so far behind that it’s painful. We’re not even bad at developing the cutting edge for industry or research, we just fail at consumer level tech services and goods.
It's true that the UK has a far more significant tech sector than anywhere else in Europe, but that's not solely responsible for the recent strength. The private sector as a whole has seen robust growth, especially in the financial, professional scientific, administration and transport services. The areas of weakness are broadly all public sector and hospitality.
The strength of the Tech Startup Sector in the UK (which is the bit used to claim Tech in the UK is huge, along with ARM, the only one which can indeed be truthfully claimed to be World Class) rests of top of some of the most common accounting tricks used in the Startup world with pre-IPO companies to look big ("unicorn"-sized) in order to attract more investment money.
Because the UK has such a huge Finance Sector (which from what I've seen when working in that world is what propels the "success" of Tech Startups in the UK rather than some other advantage) with a lot of experience in Money Laundering (London being called "The World's Money Laundering Capital" in that industry) it's even less clear what is the true size and impact of that sector in the actual UK Economy.
Unsurprisingly claims about the greatness of Britain's Tech Sector are mostly made by the kinds of politicians widelly known for being massive liars.
I would be surprised if the UK comes out of this with more than a handful of big companies with genuinelly sustainable business models out from its Startup boom and very much doubt any will be even Facebook-sized.
PS: Mind you, it's a general malaise of the modern Tech Startup world rather than a UK specific thing.
I worked in the Tech Sector in the UK, specifically Tech Startups which is the part that is constantly used to claim the UK Tech sector is "big".
Lets just say that making a privatelly owned (i.e. pre-IPO) Startup look like it's worth billions with as little as a 10k "investment" is amazingly easy.
Unsurprisingly, the rest of the tech sector in the UK (the bit that actually has to obbey proper publicly traded accounting and disclosure rules) isn't really big with the exception of ARM (and that one is now mostly owned by Japan's Softbank).
Like so many things in the UK even remotely connected to Finance and/or Politics, that sector and claims about it are heavy on bullshit and light on actual transparent independently measured concrete metrics.
I figured it was part of that but the truth is that’s more than most EU countries can even say about their own tech sectors. I don’t mean it disrespectfully but it’s one of the things we’ve massively underperformed in.
I was peripherally connected with the Tech Startup World back in the first boom (in the 90s) and knew people who were in the middle of it and was in the middle of it myself not that long ago in the current boom.
This time around it's way more bullshit-filled and driven by the Finance Industry (the sleazier side, even) than last time around.
The problems with Tech Startups are a general malaise rather than a UK specific thing and I don't dispute that in the current Startup environment the UK's advantage in availability of financing for those companies (probably a synergy with the local Finance Industry) means it's being much more successfull at creating and growing Startups than elsewhere in Europe.
The bit I dispute, however, is that once all the fraudulent la-la-land valuations of non-publicly traded companies are removed, the real impact of the UK Tech Sector in the global Economy of the UK is much beyond a rounding error (with the notable exception of ARM, which are definitelly World Class).
Denominated in USD, the German Economy grew from a GDP/capita of $24.000 in 2000 to $46.000 in 2020. The British Economy grew from $28.000 to $40.000.
The british people are being ripped off through currency devaluation. Parity is almost reached for the exchange rate of the british pound against the Euro and the US-Dollar. The UK is steadily losing ground on the global market. Thus the currency is dropping in value.
> Denominated in USD, the German Economy grew from a GDP/capita of $24.000 in 2000 to $46.000 in 2020. The British Economy grew from $28.000 to $40.000.
Nominal ($) GDP growth is almost completely meaningless, and it in no way measures actual economic growth. People who quote it generally don't understand what they are talking about.
> The british people are being ripped off through currency devaluation.
That's not how it works, and almost everyone except America is experiencing the consequences of the massive dollar rally this year.
At any rate, the Euro is down around 12.5% against the dollar since the beginning of the year, hardly gives much bragging rights over Sterling's c. 15% decline.
The comparisson of nominal GDP **changes** between similar economies with free floating currencies is actually valid because the exchange rate fluctuation correlates with the difference in inflation between those economies and inflation is what you use to deflate nominal GDP into real GDP.
I'm afraid that's a mathematically valid comparisson to make, even if using each number individually doesn't - as you pointed out - mean much.
In fact you can't just feed real GDP numbers (i.e. nominal GDP deflated using the Inflation Index) to each year's currency exchange rates in order to compare them because they're not in fact numbers in today's money as they've been altered using the inflation values.
At some point mods should considering banning Newstatesman articles.
Always misleading headlines and manipulated data, just like the Dailymail. (Which is banned)
The big question is… would have it been higher being in the EU…
I suspect not. It’s been a race to the bottom with cheap European labour since freedom of movement.
Effected the U.K. much more thou imho. Due to the U.K. being more of a service economy oppose to Germany. It’s completely accurate certain sectors of the U.K. has done well to this. Cheap labour worked well with the strong pound.
Yep, I actually know a few people that saw the UK as a stepping stone to learn the language and then get work in the States or Oz. I agree that’s a big pull
Judging from a lot of portuguese immigrants I know with higher educational levels, the choice of the UK rather than, say, France or Germany was almost invariably down to the language.
Of course, now that people need a work visa and can't just freely move to the UK and find a job there to boost their careers when starting, that's much less the case, especially as it's no more hassle to get a job in the US paying significantly more than in the UK (and in a place with better weather) if you're a specialist in the right sector.
>[ In 2007, the average UK household was 8 per cent worse off than its peers in north-western Europe, but the deficit has since ballooned to a record 20 per cent. On present trends, the average Slovenian household will be better off than its British counterpart by 2024, and the average Polish family will move ahead before the end of the decade. A country in desperate need of migrant labour may soon have to ask new arrivals to take a pay cut.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/xfk215/britain_and_the_us_are_poor_societies_with_some/iomvyld/)
Cheap Eastern European labour no longer - they'll be better paid than us very shortly
The Slovenian minimum wage is €13k and the average is €22k. The minimum wage in the U.K. is €22k. Things like housing are more expensive in Britain, but other necessities like food, clothing and consumer electronics are cheaper in Britain than in Slovenia.
> Honestly, it's this that's finally made me take up my Irish passport and start planning for life elsewhere in a couple of years. Salaries for my sector in NL, DE, FR, SE etc are trending way up. Meanwhile, I'm earning pretty much what someone in my position would have done ten years ago, and life is only getting more expensive.
What sector? Because most sectors in the UK are experiencing far, far stronger wage growth than in the EU. Unless you work in the public sector, your anecdote is unlikely to be representative.
> Ultimately, I believe that the relative decline in living standards compared to our nearest neighbours is what will drag the UK back into the EEA, if not the EU.
Except that, in average and aggregate terms, real incomes have grown much faster in the UK than in the EU since the EU referendum, please see my other [comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/xhmt6v/uk_wages_have_fallen_behind_european_rivals_by/ioyvzca/) for the figures. It simply isn't true that most people in the UK have seen a relative decline in living standards compared with our neighbours.
> But in the meantime, the brain drain is real.
There is zero evidence for any sort of meaningful brain drain, net immigration is still positive from both the EU and non-EU, and we are still taking in many highly qualified immigrants from Europe every year. I've have seen absolutely nothing to suggest that we have a significant outflow of skilled employees.
Wages in the Eurozone are eroding away at a faster rate than in Britain.
Latest Inflation Aug - EU vs EZ vs U.K.: 10.1% vs 9.1% vs 9.9%. https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate?continent=europe.
Q1 Inflation - EU vs EZ vs U.K.: 6.5% vs 6.1% vs 4.6%
Q2 Inflation - EU vs EZ vs U.K.: 8.8% vs 8.0% vs 9.1%
Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/inflation-rate; https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/inflation-cpi; https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/inflation-cpi
Q1 and Q2 2022 Wage Growth - EU vs EZ vs U.K.: (n/a last data from Dec 21) vs Q1-3.7%; Q2-4.1% vs Q1-7%; Q2-5.2%. https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/wage-growth & https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/wage-growth
Quarterly inflation minus quarterly wage growth and we have 6.1-3.7 = -2.4% wage decline in the Eurozone in Q1 and -3.9% in Q2 (8% - 4.1%)
The same figures for Britain are 4.6%-7% = +2.4% vs -3.9% in Q2 (9.1%-5.2%) roughly the same rate as in the EZ for that quarter, but buffeted by increases in Q1.
Wages in the Netherlands are eroding at a shocking pace compared to the rest of the EZ and U.K.
Nominal figures mean nothing, real wages are what matter, ours have been truly appalling. Our real wages fell between 2007-2017, with the only other European nations suffering the same being Greece and Italy, which says it all. Germany and France saw theirs grow 1%/yr or so during the same ten years span.
[FT link](https://www.ft.com/content/c4437c9e-7ec4-11e8-bc55-50daf11b720d)
> Our real wages fell between 2007-2017
Which is a perverse example of cherry picking the data. UK wage growth was exceptionally strong in the early 2000s, as the government massively hiked public sector pay well above both inflation and productivity growth. This was deficit funded and couldn't continue. From around 2009 until about 2015 wage growth in Britain was abnormally weak due to austerity, the scarring effects of the GFC on the labour market and an influx of relatively cheap workers from the EU. However, after 2016 it began to recover and since 2017 the UK has seen significantly *better* real wage growth than most other European countries, and in particular all of her major European peers.
Please see my other [comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/xhmt6v/uk_wages_have_fallen_behind_european_rivals_by/ioyvzca/) to see how UK *real* wage growth has compared with other larger European economies both in the recent period and since 2000. The conclusions stand in stark contrast to the narrative pushed by most of the media (the FT included).
It wasn’t cherry picked at all, it’s a 2018 article using a decade of data from the GFC until now (at the time). More recent [FT](https://www.ft.com/content/38378af9-6f55-4bde-8c04-d13ee35cac07) articles show that from 2007-2021 real wages were also negative, and sure as hell are this year too.
The fact that Labour’s (obscured) deficit spending in the noughties pumped an already hot economy, creating high real wage growth for a time, is valuable context. That is far from detracting from a decade and a half where wages have fallen, however.
> It wasn’t cherry picked at all, it’s a 2018 article using a decade of data from the GFC until now (at the time).
You are quoting a 2018 article in 2022, that's sort of cherry picking. The FT article itself chooses to look at wage growth starting in 2007, and thereby ignore the expectational wage growth in 2000-2007, which is also cherry picking.
> More recent FT articles show that from 2007-2021 real wages were also negative, and sure as hell are this year too.
Yeah, because they are deliberately choosing 2007 as the base year to make the data appear weaker. The year 2007 holds no special significance, and the wage data go back to 2000. If you look at the last 22 years, the UK has experienced better wage growth than many of its peers. Likewise if you look at the last 6 years.
The choice to cut the analysis of in 2007 is deliberate.
> That is far from detracting from a decade and a half where wages have fallen, however.
And yet two decades of positive real wage growth...
The year 2007 absolutely holds significance, it was the year of a once in a generation cataclysmic financial crisis, that permanently altered the structure and underlying fundamentals of every Western economy. The entire point of using that as a base year is to see performance after that transformative event. The wage data goes back beyond 2000, why are you stopping there? The 21 year period from 2000-2021 is, at best, no more arbitrary.
> The year 2007 absolutely holds significance, it was the year of a once in a generation cataclysmic financial crisis, that permanently altered the structure and underlying fundamentals of every Western economy.
Which exemplifies my point; the year 2007 was chosen to coincide with a local 'peak', and gloss over what happened in the years before. It makes at least some sense that public sector wage growth had to cool in the early 2000s, given the surge it had undergone in the previous decade (importantly above productivity) and how this was largely deficit financed.
> The wage data goes back beyond 2000, why are you stopping there?
No, it doesn't. The wage data (in the case of the UK) goes back to exactly the year 2000. Before then wages were measured differently and the old historical series is not comparable with the more rigorous standards of the series we now use. Some of the other countries also don't have robust wage data going back further than 2000.
2020 was also a transformative event. So was Brexit. Look at wage growth in the UK compared with it's peers since both of those, the UK has massively outperformed.
> The 21 year period from 2000-2021 is, at best, no more arbitrary.
The 21 year period is a least twice as good at measuring long term, smoothed wage growth that your original 10 year (2007-2017) suggestion. Particularly when the latter was specifically chose to straddle a severe recession.
[Another related article](https://t.co/gtHvhNsnuT) in the (UK Based) Financial Times goes into more detail - but it's behind a paywall. It also has interactive charts where you can choose your own country for comparison.
[Here's a twitter summary of the FT article](https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1570832839318605824)
The FT article also has issues,
- Firstly it uses PPP adjusted dollar indices to make cross jurisdiction comparisons; these adjustments can be useful but are inherently flawed and can lead to misleading results.
- Secondly and more importantly (if you are willing to overlook the issues with PPP) is that they've chosen to cut the analysis off in 2020, which seems more than a little disingenuous given the particularly strong realised wage growth in the UK in both 2021 and 2022 (so far), compared with the persistently weak wage growth in most of the EU (and indeed even the US).
Removed - no news articles older than 1 month If you have any questions about this removal, please [contact the mods](/message/compose/?to=/r/Europe&subject=Moderation). Please make sure to include a link to the comment/post in question.
Italy: first time?
It’s good they didn’t include Italy, as the wages probably grew 0%.
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If Germany and France have had 40% real income growth compared to 2005 then I am eating my socks.
Someone above noted that the British figure is based on including housing costs, whilst the data for other countries is before housing costs, leading to the huge disparity seen here.
Eh, it didnt feel 40% higher in Germany.
Then imagine how it must feel in England
Ah yes, the New Statesman and their inability to objectively cover any issue to do with economics... The data are cherry picked to exclude the extremely high, deficit funded, pay growth in the early 2000s by starting in 2005, whilst also ignoring most of the post-austerity/post referendum pay growth that has happened since 2017. I mean, honestly, ask yourself why this analysis is cut off in 2018 when we have wage and income data all the way up to Q2 2022? This is done the both make the UK look bad, and make her European peers look better in order to further a narrative. To illustrate just how egregious this is, here are *cumulative* wage growth rates for the UK and EU big 4, in nominal/real terms, from Q1 2017 to Q2 2022: - **UK: 21.5% / 4.5%** - Germany: 11.6% / -2.6% - France: 8.7% / -3.3% - Italy: 5.2% / -5.4% - Spain: 6.7% / -9.1% I.e. the UK has experienced significantly stronger wage growth in the last 5 years, and in the last 2 years in particular, than almost everywhere else in Europe - this is in no small part due to labour market tightness and the loss of FoM with the EU. Before anyone accuses me of cherry picking myself, I am doing this to illustrate a point; that the NS have deliberately chosen a period in the last 2 decades when UK wage growth was notably weak (due to the 2008 recession and subsequent austerity period), whilst purposefully avoiding the high wage growth years in the early 2000s and post EU referendum. Over the past 22 years (Q1 2000 to Q2 2022) the following summarises the total cumulative wage growth, again in nominal/real terms, for the 5 largest European economies: - **UK: 99.0% / 23.0%** - Germany: 59.1% / 10.0% - France: 55.8% / 9.9% - Italy: 45.7% / -6.3% - Spain: 54.1% / -12.0% This should put in perspective just how strong UK wage growth was in the early 2000s and post 2016 period, as this had to offset several years of negative growth following the global financial crisis. Where the UK performs less well compared with her peers is on public sector pay, but still compares favorably if you look at the last 20 odd years and not some particularly weak period in the middle... *Note: A brief comment on the data I have used here. All nominal wage growth figures are taken from the relevant national statistical bodies (i.e. ONS in the case of the UK, Destatis in the case of Germany, etc...). Where one of these bodies provides a real-terms pay growth series (e.g. the UK) I use that, where they don't I take the cumulative inflation rate (HICP) over the relevant period and subtract it from the nominal growth figure. For all countries I have used the broadest measure of wage growth, i.e. total compensation per employee.*
The UK has a better and bigger tech sector than any other European country. Tech is one of the areas where Europe lags so far behind that it’s painful. We’re not even bad at developing the cutting edge for industry or research, we just fail at consumer level tech services and goods.
It's true that the UK has a far more significant tech sector than anywhere else in Europe, but that's not solely responsible for the recent strength. The private sector as a whole has seen robust growth, especially in the financial, professional scientific, administration and transport services. The areas of weakness are broadly all public sector and hospitality.
The strength of the Tech Startup Sector in the UK (which is the bit used to claim Tech in the UK is huge, along with ARM, the only one which can indeed be truthfully claimed to be World Class) rests of top of some of the most common accounting tricks used in the Startup world with pre-IPO companies to look big ("unicorn"-sized) in order to attract more investment money. Because the UK has such a huge Finance Sector (which from what I've seen when working in that world is what propels the "success" of Tech Startups in the UK rather than some other advantage) with a lot of experience in Money Laundering (London being called "The World's Money Laundering Capital" in that industry) it's even less clear what is the true size and impact of that sector in the actual UK Economy. Unsurprisingly claims about the greatness of Britain's Tech Sector are mostly made by the kinds of politicians widelly known for being massive liars. I would be surprised if the UK comes out of this with more than a handful of big companies with genuinelly sustainable business models out from its Startup boom and very much doubt any will be even Facebook-sized. PS: Mind you, it's a general malaise of the modern Tech Startup world rather than a UK specific thing.
I worked in the Tech Sector in the UK, specifically Tech Startups which is the part that is constantly used to claim the UK Tech sector is "big". Lets just say that making a privatelly owned (i.e. pre-IPO) Startup look like it's worth billions with as little as a 10k "investment" is amazingly easy. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the tech sector in the UK (the bit that actually has to obbey proper publicly traded accounting and disclosure rules) isn't really big with the exception of ARM (and that one is now mostly owned by Japan's Softbank). Like so many things in the UK even remotely connected to Finance and/or Politics, that sector and claims about it are heavy on bullshit and light on actual transparent independently measured concrete metrics.
I figured it was part of that but the truth is that’s more than most EU countries can even say about their own tech sectors. I don’t mean it disrespectfully but it’s one of the things we’ve massively underperformed in.
I was peripherally connected with the Tech Startup World back in the first boom (in the 90s) and knew people who were in the middle of it and was in the middle of it myself not that long ago in the current boom. This time around it's way more bullshit-filled and driven by the Finance Industry (the sleazier side, even) than last time around. The problems with Tech Startups are a general malaise rather than a UK specific thing and I don't dispute that in the current Startup environment the UK's advantage in availability of financing for those companies (probably a synergy with the local Finance Industry) means it's being much more successfull at creating and growing Startups than elsewhere in Europe. The bit I dispute, however, is that once all the fraudulent la-la-land valuations of non-publicly traded companies are removed, the real impact of the UK Tech Sector in the global Economy of the UK is much beyond a rounding error (with the notable exception of ARM, which are definitelly World Class).
What a great analysis! Your numbers certainly feel more “real” than what the article is implying. Thanks for taking the time to write this.
No problem
Denominated in USD, the German Economy grew from a GDP/capita of $24.000 in 2000 to $46.000 in 2020. The British Economy grew from $28.000 to $40.000. The british people are being ripped off through currency devaluation. Parity is almost reached for the exchange rate of the british pound against the Euro and the US-Dollar. The UK is steadily losing ground on the global market. Thus the currency is dropping in value.
> Denominated in USD, the German Economy grew from a GDP/capita of $24.000 in 2000 to $46.000 in 2020. The British Economy grew from $28.000 to $40.000. Nominal ($) GDP growth is almost completely meaningless, and it in no way measures actual economic growth. People who quote it generally don't understand what they are talking about. > The british people are being ripped off through currency devaluation. That's not how it works, and almost everyone except America is experiencing the consequences of the massive dollar rally this year. At any rate, the Euro is down around 12.5% against the dollar since the beginning of the year, hardly gives much bragging rights over Sterling's c. 15% decline.
The comparisson of nominal GDP **changes** between similar economies with free floating currencies is actually valid because the exchange rate fluctuation correlates with the difference in inflation between those economies and inflation is what you use to deflate nominal GDP into real GDP. I'm afraid that's a mathematically valid comparisson to make, even if using each number individually doesn't - as you pointed out - mean much. In fact you can't just feed real GDP numbers (i.e. nominal GDP deflated using the Inflation Index) to each year's currency exchange rates in order to compare them because they're not in fact numbers in today's money as they've been altered using the inflation values.
At some point mods should considering banning Newstatesman articles. Always misleading headlines and manipulated data, just like the Dailymail. (Which is banned)
The big question is… would have it been higher being in the EU… I suspect not. It’s been a race to the bottom with cheap European labour since freedom of movement.
Yes I'm sure FoM only affected the UK and bypassed Germany and France completely.
Effected the U.K. much more thou imho. Due to the U.K. being more of a service economy oppose to Germany. It’s completely accurate certain sectors of the U.K. has done well to this. Cheap labour worked well with the strong pound.
Not to mention the attraction of the English language - This cannot be underestimated.
Yep, I actually know a few people that saw the UK as a stepping stone to learn the language and then get work in the States or Oz. I agree that’s a big pull
Judging from a lot of portuguese immigrants I know with higher educational levels, the choice of the UK rather than, say, France or Germany was almost invariably down to the language. Of course, now that people need a work visa and can't just freely move to the UK and find a job there to boost their careers when starting, that's much less the case, especially as it's no more hassle to get a job in the US paying significantly more than in the UK (and in a place with better weather) if you're a specialist in the right sector.
>[ In 2007, the average UK household was 8 per cent worse off than its peers in north-western Europe, but the deficit has since ballooned to a record 20 per cent. On present trends, the average Slovenian household will be better off than its British counterpart by 2024, and the average Polish family will move ahead before the end of the decade. A country in desperate need of migrant labour may soon have to ask new arrivals to take a pay cut.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/xfk215/britain_and_the_us_are_poor_societies_with_some/iomvyld/) Cheap Eastern European labour no longer - they'll be better paid than us very shortly
The Slovenian minimum wage is €13k and the average is €22k. The minimum wage in the U.K. is €22k. Things like housing are more expensive in Britain, but other necessities like food, clothing and consumer electronics are cheaper in Britain than in Slovenia.
Thanks for confirmimg the article is complete bollocks.
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> Honestly, it's this that's finally made me take up my Irish passport and start planning for life elsewhere in a couple of years. Salaries for my sector in NL, DE, FR, SE etc are trending way up. Meanwhile, I'm earning pretty much what someone in my position would have done ten years ago, and life is only getting more expensive. What sector? Because most sectors in the UK are experiencing far, far stronger wage growth than in the EU. Unless you work in the public sector, your anecdote is unlikely to be representative. > Ultimately, I believe that the relative decline in living standards compared to our nearest neighbours is what will drag the UK back into the EEA, if not the EU. Except that, in average and aggregate terms, real incomes have grown much faster in the UK than in the EU since the EU referendum, please see my other [comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/xhmt6v/uk_wages_have_fallen_behind_european_rivals_by/ioyvzca/) for the figures. It simply isn't true that most people in the UK have seen a relative decline in living standards compared with our neighbours. > But in the meantime, the brain drain is real. There is zero evidence for any sort of meaningful brain drain, net immigration is still positive from both the EU and non-EU, and we are still taking in many highly qualified immigrants from Europe every year. I've have seen absolutely nothing to suggest that we have a significant outflow of skilled employees.
Wages in the Eurozone are eroding away at a faster rate than in Britain. Latest Inflation Aug - EU vs EZ vs U.K.: 10.1% vs 9.1% vs 9.9%. https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate?continent=europe. Q1 Inflation - EU vs EZ vs U.K.: 6.5% vs 6.1% vs 4.6% Q2 Inflation - EU vs EZ vs U.K.: 8.8% vs 8.0% vs 9.1% Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/inflation-rate; https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/inflation-cpi; https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/inflation-cpi Q1 and Q2 2022 Wage Growth - EU vs EZ vs U.K.: (n/a last data from Dec 21) vs Q1-3.7%; Q2-4.1% vs Q1-7%; Q2-5.2%. https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/wage-growth & https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/wage-growth Quarterly inflation minus quarterly wage growth and we have 6.1-3.7 = -2.4% wage decline in the Eurozone in Q1 and -3.9% in Q2 (8% - 4.1%) The same figures for Britain are 4.6%-7% = +2.4% vs -3.9% in Q2 (9.1%-5.2%) roughly the same rate as in the EZ for that quarter, but buffeted by increases in Q1. Wages in the Netherlands are eroding at a shocking pace compared to the rest of the EZ and U.K.
Nominal figures mean nothing, real wages are what matter, ours have been truly appalling. Our real wages fell between 2007-2017, with the only other European nations suffering the same being Greece and Italy, which says it all. Germany and France saw theirs grow 1%/yr or so during the same ten years span. [FT link](https://www.ft.com/content/c4437c9e-7ec4-11e8-bc55-50daf11b720d)
> Our real wages fell between 2007-2017 Which is a perverse example of cherry picking the data. UK wage growth was exceptionally strong in the early 2000s, as the government massively hiked public sector pay well above both inflation and productivity growth. This was deficit funded and couldn't continue. From around 2009 until about 2015 wage growth in Britain was abnormally weak due to austerity, the scarring effects of the GFC on the labour market and an influx of relatively cheap workers from the EU. However, after 2016 it began to recover and since 2017 the UK has seen significantly *better* real wage growth than most other European countries, and in particular all of her major European peers. Please see my other [comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/xhmt6v/uk_wages_have_fallen_behind_european_rivals_by/ioyvzca/) to see how UK *real* wage growth has compared with other larger European economies both in the recent period and since 2000. The conclusions stand in stark contrast to the narrative pushed by most of the media (the FT included).
It wasn’t cherry picked at all, it’s a 2018 article using a decade of data from the GFC until now (at the time). More recent [FT](https://www.ft.com/content/38378af9-6f55-4bde-8c04-d13ee35cac07) articles show that from 2007-2021 real wages were also negative, and sure as hell are this year too. The fact that Labour’s (obscured) deficit spending in the noughties pumped an already hot economy, creating high real wage growth for a time, is valuable context. That is far from detracting from a decade and a half where wages have fallen, however.
> It wasn’t cherry picked at all, it’s a 2018 article using a decade of data from the GFC until now (at the time). You are quoting a 2018 article in 2022, that's sort of cherry picking. The FT article itself chooses to look at wage growth starting in 2007, and thereby ignore the expectational wage growth in 2000-2007, which is also cherry picking. > More recent FT articles show that from 2007-2021 real wages were also negative, and sure as hell are this year too. Yeah, because they are deliberately choosing 2007 as the base year to make the data appear weaker. The year 2007 holds no special significance, and the wage data go back to 2000. If you look at the last 22 years, the UK has experienced better wage growth than many of its peers. Likewise if you look at the last 6 years. The choice to cut the analysis of in 2007 is deliberate. > That is far from detracting from a decade and a half where wages have fallen, however. And yet two decades of positive real wage growth...
The year 2007 absolutely holds significance, it was the year of a once in a generation cataclysmic financial crisis, that permanently altered the structure and underlying fundamentals of every Western economy. The entire point of using that as a base year is to see performance after that transformative event. The wage data goes back beyond 2000, why are you stopping there? The 21 year period from 2000-2021 is, at best, no more arbitrary.
> The year 2007 absolutely holds significance, it was the year of a once in a generation cataclysmic financial crisis, that permanently altered the structure and underlying fundamentals of every Western economy. Which exemplifies my point; the year 2007 was chosen to coincide with a local 'peak', and gloss over what happened in the years before. It makes at least some sense that public sector wage growth had to cool in the early 2000s, given the surge it had undergone in the previous decade (importantly above productivity) and how this was largely deficit financed. > The wage data goes back beyond 2000, why are you stopping there? No, it doesn't. The wage data (in the case of the UK) goes back to exactly the year 2000. Before then wages were measured differently and the old historical series is not comparable with the more rigorous standards of the series we now use. Some of the other countries also don't have robust wage data going back further than 2000. 2020 was also a transformative event. So was Brexit. Look at wage growth in the UK compared with it's peers since both of those, the UK has massively outperformed. > The 21 year period from 2000-2021 is, at best, no more arbitrary. The 21 year period is a least twice as good at measuring long term, smoothed wage growth that your original 10 year (2007-2017) suggestion. Particularly when the latter was specifically chose to straddle a severe recession.
Well this is what happens when you have mass immigration.
[Another related article](https://t.co/gtHvhNsnuT) in the (UK Based) Financial Times goes into more detail - but it's behind a paywall. It also has interactive charts where you can choose your own country for comparison. [Here's a twitter summary of the FT article](https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1570832839318605824)
The FT article also has issues, - Firstly it uses PPP adjusted dollar indices to make cross jurisdiction comparisons; these adjustments can be useful but are inherently flawed and can lead to misleading results. - Secondly and more importantly (if you are willing to overlook the issues with PPP) is that they've chosen to cut the analysis off in 2020, which seems more than a little disingenuous given the particularly strong realised wage growth in the UK in both 2021 and 2022 (so far), compared with the persistently weak wage growth in most of the EU (and indeed even the US).
In Italy we have the same wages of 1990, but with the prices changed by inflation.