SCOTS have seen their wage growth lag far behind the UK average in the last seven years, while areas of London have seen average income skyrocket, a new analysis of ONS data has found.
Aberdeen saw the slowest wage growth across the whole of the UK, the study of incomes from July 2014 and December 2021 found.
While the average UK resident has seen their wage rise by 28.1% in those seven years, a person living in the Granite city has seen their income increase by just 5.2%.
READ MORE: Inflation rises further to fresh 30-year high as cost-of-living crisis mounts
The three areas of the UK which have seen the slowest wage growth since 2014 have all been in Scotland.
After Aberdeen, Shetland has seen its wages grow by 9.6%, and Na h-Eileanan Siar by 14.5%.
Of the 15 areas in the UK which have seen the slowest wage growth, the majority (eight) are in Scotland. Clackmannanshire and Fife, Caithness and Sutherland and Ross and Cromarty, Orkney, Angus and Dundee, and Inverness and Nairn and Moray, Badenoch and Strathspey, were all in the bottom 15.
The other end of the scale is dominated by areas in London, with all but one of the top 15 being in the English capital. The final area at the top of the list is Cambridgeshire.
Hackney and Newham saw the most rapid wage growth in the UK, with incomes having risen by 51% since 2014.
A spokesperson for Digital ID, the firm which commissioned the data, said: “The UK is facing a serious cost-of-living crisis, from soaring inflation to unmanageable energy bills, and this data reveals just how hard it is for many areas of the country to swallow the costs.
“The stagnant wages in areas such as Aberdeen, South Teesside, Durham and Derby show just how much the decision to increase National Insurance by 1.25 percentage points in April – which actually translates to an average 10 percent increase in National Insurance – will affect workers who are just trying to provide for their families.
“With the NI hike affecting employers too, it is unlikely that many companies will be offering pay rises, and unless something substantial is done to ease the cost-of-living crisis, we will see many more families pushed into poverty.”
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