New wage figures published by the TUC today reveal inequalities over who’s getting pay rises in recent years.

Our analysis of hourly earnings in the ONS’s Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) for 2016, 2017 and 2018 shows that pay for the highest earners rose by a generous 7.6 per cent over that period.

By contrast, pay for the typical worker, those on median pay, grew by just 0.1 per cent between 2016 and 2018.

With so many people struggling with Britain’s cost of living crisis, it cannot be right for the wages of those at the top to be rising by so much more.

Yet instead of getting a grip on this issue, Boris Johnson is promising a tax give away to high earners that will only make things worse.

The prime minister is focused on helping his wealthy mates and donors – not working people. But we need an economy that works for everyone, not just the highest earning 1%.

What does our analysis show?

Our analysis is based on percentile pay data, which splits the workforce into a hundred evenly-sized groups based on their pay. This allows us to analyse the level of pay at each percentile.

It shows that the median worker earned £12.73 in 2018, while those at the 99th percentile earned £63.18 per hour – four times as much as the typical worker. In a hypothetical 37-hour week, this would add up to around £2340 for the top 1 per cent (compared to a UK average of £471).

The chart below shows the pay distribution steadily rising until we get to the highest paid workers, when it suddenly shoots up.