Is take home pay for the majority rising faster than prices?
"The Labour leadership is also now claiming that people's wages are no longer linked to rising growth. Again, this isn't true. The figures show that for all but the richest 10% people's take home pay went up by more than inflation last year",
In a retort to Labour's 'cost of living' narrative, Nick Clegg has repeated the claim we saw earlier this year that prices aren't in fact rising faster than wages.
Government analysis of data from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) backs up the claims, finding take-home pay for all except the top 10% increased at a higher rate than inflation (2.4%) from April 2012 to April 2013.
This differs to Labour's analysis of wages and prices, which uses Average Weekly Earnings and which shows a slower growth in wages than ASHE over the same period. Our article has more information on the differences between the two metrics and calculations.
We said at the time that the government's analysis should have been publicly available - as far as we're aware, this still hasn't happened.