The Guardian view on Britain’s jobs market: Osborne could use Scrooge’s caution | Editorial
"What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer," asks Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. "Every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!" Ebenezer famously struggled to be Yuletide-appropriate. Even so, as Britons sink into the season to be maxed-out, a bit of Scrooge's scepticism about how we're going to pay it all back would be handy. Because while the government is trumpeting the jobs recovery, and there are some grounds for celebration, there are also real causes for concern.
But let's not stint on a hefty dollop of good news: 2015 has been the year of the pay rise. After seven miserable years in which wage increases have lagged behind price rises, salaries are starting to go up in real, inflation-adjusted, terms. And go up sharply: in August, earnings were 3.1% higher than a year ago, even while inflation was zero. These are some of the biggest increases in a decade, albeit largely helped by vanishing inflation rather than generous employers. The one sector where bosses have dug into their pockets is in minimum-wage jobs - where they were forced to by the state jacking up statutory rates for the low-paid.
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