Nearly 6 million people in the UK work for central or local government, including teachers, nurses and police officers, to name just a few examples. How much the government pays its workers matters, not only for the living standards of publicsector employees themselves, but also for the public finances and the economy more broadly.
Over the past two decades, public-sector pay in the UK has been marked by substantial shifts, largely driven by economic crises and government policy responses. Following the 2008 financial crisis, the UK government imposed stringent austerity measures, including for public-sector pay. Between 2010 and 2017, most public-sector workers saw their pay increases capped at 1% per year, well below the rate of inflation, leading to a significant reduction in real earnings.
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