UK’s public sector workers work nine years less

Authors of the research say it tells a tale of two Britains – a state sector awash with taxpayers’ cash while the rest of the economy struggles to stay afloat.

Thisismoney.co.uk reported that public sector workers enjoy better pay than those in the private sector, as well as better pensions, shorter hours, and earlier retirement.

Over their lifetimes, those in the private sector work 23% longer – equivalent to an extra nine years and ten weeks – than public sector employees. This is thanks to a combination of shorter hours, more time off and earlier retirement.

The findings explode once and for all the old idea that public sector workers have better job security and gold-plated pensions because they have lower salaries.

The report, by centre-Right think tank Policy Exchange, also found that the chance of being made compulsorily redundant in the civil service is an astonishing 0.00007%.

Generous pension schemes in the state sector are now worth up to 15% on top of salary, the report says, while public sector pay costs have soared by more than a third in real terms over the last seven years – three times faster than in the private sector.

The report uses figures from the Office for National Statistics to show that more than seven million people are now employed in the public sector, over a million more than official figures suggest.

And £4bn more is spent on marketing, PR, customer service and office managers’ jobs in the public sector than in 2002.

The report says median gross pay is now £22,417 in the public sector and £19,932 in the private sector. It adds that between 1997 and 2007 public sector productivity fell, while productivity in the private sector increased by nearly 28%.

Between 2002 and 2009, the number working in the public sector increased nearly five times more quickly than numbers in the private sector.

The report says that on an hourly basis, the typical public sector worker is 30% better paid than their private sector counterpart. Before 1997, when Labour came to power, private and public sector salaries rose at similar rates. But between 2002 and 2009, typical pay grew 86% faster in the public sector, partly funded by additional public spending. Meanwhile, real earnings for private workers have been largely stagnant since 2002.

Between 1997 and 2008 the proportion of public sector workers without any pension provision from their employer fell from 21% to 16%. However, in the private sector the same figure increased from 54% to 63%.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said it was ‘impossible’ to accurately compare private and public sector pay because of the higher number of skilled and professional workers and differences in the nature of jobs. He said the report used ‘deliberately misleading’ figures and painted ‘every nurse, every doctor, every teacher as a drag on the economy.