Forget AVERAGE incomes! What’s happened to the LOWEST incomes in the UK?

Average incomes in the years up to 2012. Source: ONS.

Average incomes in the years up to 2012. Source: ONS.

Average household incomes have risen by 0.2 per cent since the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats took office in 2010. Well, whoopee do!

That means for every £1,000 you earned then, you get £1,002 now. At long last you can buy that car you always wanted! That luxury holiday you’ve always been putting off; that mansion in the country!

Maybe not.

In fact, we know that average incomes are skewed by the disproportionately high earnings of the mega-rich, while the poorest in the country are losing more and more every day.

A far more indicative figure would be the change in the lowest incomes in the UK over the last five years – but you won’t see Cameron crowing over that!

Didn’t he once say the measure of a government was how it treated the least privileged people in society?

It’s amazing how they forget these comments when they’re asked to explain their record.

If anyone can provide figures showing the trend in the lowest UK incomes, please get in touch.

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10 thoughts on “Forget AVERAGE incomes! What’s happened to the LOWEST incomes in the UK?

    1. Jim Round

      I linked to this blogpost in a comment I posted on a previous article.
      What is worrying is that Tameside Council is Labour controlled, this seems to be a way of getting more money.
      What’s even more worrying is that it has not been voted against by the councillors.

  1. hstorm

    Add to that the fact that £1,002 now is worth less than £1,000 was in 2010, and we can see that in real terms, average incomes have declined.

  2. Steve Grant

    This only goes to prove that politicians have little idea of how ordinary people live.Beats me how anyone ever voted for the this shower.?

    They are the ones that talk but that’s all, their plans ignore the real people in this country who don’t seem to even appear on their radar except when they are taking wealth away.

    1. Jonathan Wilson

      I’m afraid you can blame me for that (well not just me, but still). I really disliked Brown as a PM, although I felt he was a good chancellor; but perhaps should have used the “bail out” money for the account holders, not the banks themselves… but I digress.

      Cameron seemed to be offering a change, and I have always been of a mind that multiple concurrent terms of a party gets bad (any one of them) as they get complacent and lazy and also a little bit power mad, and we have been through that before with the wicked witch: Thatcher.

      I believed his “we will make work pay” and, wrongly, assumed it meant that working would pay better than before… what i didn’t know was that his idea of making work pay actually meant making people on social security much worse off, so poor working people would seem better off. Then he put the most incompetent person ever in charge of the DWP and things have gone rapidly down hill ever since. The non stop “shirkers/skyvers/etc.” the bedroom tax, the uprating (“down grading,” seriously the best example of double plus good speak if ever there was) bill, UJM, UC, ESA changes, MAXIMARSE, work(un)fare, etc.

      NHS “safe in his hands, no top down reorganisation…”
      VAT “no plans to increase it…”

      Need I go on?

      I was robbed, my vote was stolen by his and his parties lies, I won’t get fooled again!

      That said, here in Erewash… the one time cun’servative Jessica Lee has seen the writing on the wall, she’s quitting before she’s kicked out.

      I will be voting for Ed and Labour this time round, and I quite like the fact he is a bit nerdy and a bit of a geek, far more human than the out of touch lying bullingdon ****hole that Camoron has turned out to be.

  3. clouty

    Hi Mike, I’ve been hunting for stats on impact on income deciles for you. Here’s a useful graph https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44533954/impact%20on%20deciles%202011-2015.png from here http://www.prgmea.com/pdf/accompany/2.pdf and then there’s this one
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44533954/Median%20gross%20income.png from here (near the end) https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/293738/budget_2014_distributional_analysis.pdf
    I’ve tried to find a comparable table for 2011 but to no avail – so far.

    1. Florence

      The budget commentary report shows clearly that they knew 100,000 children would be worse off after the 2011 budget.

      The treasury tables use % far too much, which is no surprise either, as it masks the massive inequalities quite well.

      I’m looking for some low pay figures too. Perhaps the reason we can’t find them is because IDS and Osborne have blocked the low-pay report for the past 30 months i.e. since the 2012 changes in benefits. Along with the ESA death figures, there are many missing reports and released statistics that would give a clear picture about who has been affected and how. It’s another form of lying, and air-brushing out the victims of “austerity”. As I have said before, these victims are the UK’s disappeared.

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