Sir, – Your report (“Average earnings down nearly 15% in three years”, Business, November 8th) is seriously misleading and inaccurate. What is actually down by almost 15 per cent is the total wage bill – which is quite a different matter.
The total wage bill is down because there were over 150,000 fewer at work in 2011 than three years earlier.
Earnings for the average person at work have remained quite stable over the past three years. There have been cuts, but there have also been pay rises. Overall, most wages have remained the same. Average weekly earnings were down by under 4 per cent but as people worked fewer hours, hourly earnings were down by less than that. Inflation declined very marginally in this three- year period mitigating the decline somewhat.
The €25 billion sucked out of the economy by the Government in austerity so far has increased unemployment substantially. The fall in the numbers at work, totalling 358,000 since 2007 has contributed to the collapse of 25.7 per cent in domestic demand. Had overall wages been deflated/cut, as per the original plan for an “internal deflation” then domestic demand would have collapsed even further. – Yours, etc,