Facebook post repeats unreliable Labour claim about family finances

A Facebook post claims “The typical household is now £5,883 worse off since 2019”, but there are a number of problems with this figure. 

The post, first shared in May, says: “The conservatives are making Britain poorer while they all get richer, they are all on the gravy train! 

“The typical household is now £5,883 worse off since 2019 due to energy prices, mortgages, groceries, motoring, personal tax and council, tax. [sic]” 

The £5,883 figure was first shared by the Labour party in May and circulated widely during the 2024 general election campaign. But as we’ve previously explained, the figure only includes six specific household costs, and doesn’t account for changes to wages or benefits since 2019. 

Real household disposable income per person—a commonly used measure of living standards—has seen a much smaller decrease over this period.

And as pointed out by the BBC’s More or Less programme, it’s also not necessarily possible to prove that the cost increases used to reach this figure are all a result of Conservative policies, as the post seems to imply.

It’s important to consider whether information you see online comes from credible, impartial sources before sharing it. Inaccurate political claims can impact a person’s opinion and understanding about a particular party, individual or policy. 

Where does the £5,883 come from? 

Labour says the figure comes from the increase to six specific household costs faced by the “average British household” since 2019. As the Facebook post outlines, these consist of the energy price cap (£479), groceries (£1,040), council tax (£421), mortgages (£2,880), personal tax (£874) and motoring (£189). 

Although it wasn’t made clear in the post, or in other reports of the figure we’ve seen, it appears to be an annual estimate. In other words, Labour seems to be claiming typical families, or households, are £5,883 a year worse off in 2024 than they were in 2019.

However, as we’ve previously explained, there are a number of problems with this figure. 

Firstly, it includes outgoings that don’t necessarily apply to all families—for example, many don’t have a car or a mortgage—while it excludes other outgoings that families may face, such as water bills or phone bills. 

For example, a Labour press release published in May explained that the mortgage figure refers to a Bank of England report from December 2023 that said: “For the typical owner-occupier mortgagor rolling off a fixed rate between 2023 Q2 and the end of 2026, their monthly mortgage repayments are projected to increase by around £240,” which does equate to £2,880 a year.

But this only applies to a specific group whose fixed rate mortgages ended in a certain period. Although many mortgage-holders may have rolled off a fixed-rate mortgage since 2019, it’s not necessarily accurate to claim this figure represents a cost incurred by a “typical” family. As of 2022/23 around 29% of dwellings in England are owned with a mortgage. 

It’s also worth noting that families are not the same as households—the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates that there were 28.4 million households and 19.5 million families in the UK in 2023. 

Another problem is that the figure doesn’t take into account any changes to wages or benefits since 2019, with some wages and benefits having risen, in cash terms at least.   

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) measures changes in living standards using real household disposable income per person. This is based on a household’s gross disposable income, which is the amount they have to spend on consumption, or to save or invest, after taxes, National Insurance, pension contributions and interest have been paid, and taking account of inflation.

According to the OBR’s most recent forecasts following the spring budget in March 2024, real household disposable income per person is estimated to have fallen by £166 per person, from £21,767 in 2019/20 to £21,601 in 2024/25. The ONS says there’s an average of 2.4 residents in a household, which means the OBR’s forecast equates to just under £400 less per household, which is clearly much lower than £5,883.