Workers 'set to lose £6,660 from their wage packets between 2010 and 2015'

Workers will be earning £1,520 a year less by 2015 than in 2010 - amounting to a loss of £6,660 in real terms over five years.
The total would be enough to pay for the average family weekly shop for a year and a half or buy a small car, according to the Labour party, which based the figures on analysis of Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts.
The figures also reveal a widening north-south income divide, with real wages now 8.1 per cent lower in Yorkshire and the Humber compared with a 5.5 per cent fall in the south east.

Wage watch: Workers will be earning £1,520 a year less by 2015 than in 2010, amounting to a total loss of £6,660 in real terms over five years

Workers have taken the biggest hits to their salaries in Yorkshire and the Humber, Wales, the north west and the south west of England, the analysis found.
Labour's report comes amid an escalating row over 'zero hours' employment contracts, under which staff are not guaranteed work and often receive short notice of whatever hours they get.

 

Britons on the controversial contracts could top one million - four times higher than official estimates - and the Government is investigating whether to curb them due to fears workers' rights are being eroded.
Real wages have fallen for 35 months running under the current Government, outstripping the record of former Labour leader James Callaghan who saw real wages fall for 17 months in a row in the 1970s, the figures show.
People's spending power has dropped in every month but one under Coalition rule as price rises outstrip wage increases, the report from shadow Treasury minister Chris Leslie found.
'It is a reduction in real wages over that period of £6,660 which for a lot of people will resonate. It is a significant, serious amount of money,' said Leslie.

Salary cut: Loss of £6,660 would be enough to pay for the average family weekly shop for a year and a half or buy a small car

He added: 'That's enough to pay for the average family weekly shop for almost a year-and-a-half, it's enough to get a new car, albeit quite a small one at a stretch, but it's quite a significant sum of money.'
Leslie said you couldn't separate out wider economic growth from how people were being affected in their daily lives, and cuts to income as well as upward pressure on prices had created a very serious situation.
He claimed Labour would help middle and low-income families with a lower 10p starting rate of tax, action to tackle soaring energy bills, and protecting tax credits for working families by reversing the cut in the top tax rate from 50 per cent to 45 per cent.
Government whip and Liberal Democrat Mark Hunter blamed Labour for 'crashing the economy' and said to criticise the Coalition for cleaning up the mess was 'utterly hypocritical'.
Conservative business minister Matthew Hancock said: 'Today's squeeze on living standards is a direct result of Labour's disastrous economic policy that got us into this mess.
'And if they were in government now, Labour would make hardworking people worse off. Their plan for more borrowing and more debt - exactly the same old Labour policy that got us into this mess in the first place - would mean soaring mortgage rates and higher bills.'
Hancock said the Government was taking 2.7million out of income tax altogether, cutting income tax for millions more and fixing the welfare system so that it rewarded hard work.