CSO lowers public versus private pay gap to 19%

THE Central Statistics Office has almost halved its estimate of the public-versus-private sector pay gap to 19.1%, a move welcomed by some public service unions but dismissed by others.

With the Government widely expected to demand at least 5% pay cuts in the public sector in the December budget in order to claw back some of the €4 billion it needs to save this year, the income of civil service, education and health staff has been under intense scrutiny in the last number of weeks.

One of the reports which fuelled the calls from economists and commentators for a reduction in public service pay, was the CSO National Employment Survey for 2007. Released in July, it found average weekly earnings of the State’s employees were 32.6% higher than those in the private sector.