u/theionarr

I made a video digging into UK wage stagnation and the numbers are honestly worse than I expected, so wanted to share the key findings here.
The headline stat, from the Resolution Foundation and LSE: if UK wages had kept growing at the rate they were before the 2008 financial crisis, the average worker would be earning £10,700 more per year than they actually are today. Not £10,700 more than 2008. £10,700 more than what 2008 would have grown into. Median UK wages only returned to 2008 levels (in real terms) in 2025. Seventeen years of basically zero net gain, while most other rich countries saw real wages grow 8–10% over the same period.

A few other things that stood out researching this:
Productivity collapsed and nobody really fixed it. UK productivity growth dropped from ~2%/year pre-2008 to under 1% after, and actually went backwards in 2024. Root cause: chronic underinvestment. UK manufacturing capital intensity (machinery/tech per worker) is 47% below peers like Germany, France, the US. Business investment is second-lowest in the G7.

Fiscal drag is quietly taxing pay rises into nothing. Income tax thresholds have been frozen since 2021 and are now confirmed frozen until 2031. As wages rise even slightly, more people get pulled into higher tax bands without any actual tax rise being voted on. Result: 5.76 million people now pay the 40% rate, up from 3.83 million in 2019 — a 50% jump in five years, and most of them aren't what you'd call "high earners."

Housing is eating whatever's left. English private renters spent 36.3% of income on rent in 2024 (ONS considers 30%+ unaffordable, and we've been above that every year since 2016). In London it's 46%. 16-24 year olds renting privately are at 46% nationally too.

Inequality makes it worse than the average suggests. Low-income UK households are 22% poorer than their equivalents in France. The gap at the bottom is more than double the gap at the top — the people losing out from stagnant wages aren't the ones who'd be cushioned by a "typical household" stat.

Full breakdown with all the sources (ONS, OBR, IPPR, Resolution Foundation/LSE, HMRC) is in the video if anyone wants to go deeper:

https://youtu.be/mWprlul6vDc?is=4AUM-RoGGb9JDBa2

Thank you and have a great weekend

906,000 net migration in a single year. Politicians argue in headlines. The actual economic picture gets buried.

I made a 10 minute video going through the data properly, what migrants actually contribute to public finances, where the labour market would collapse without them, and why the costs land so unevenly on renters and low-paid workers.

The government’s own forecaster (OBR) found a migrant arriving at 25 on average salary contributes £341,000 to public finances over their working life more than an equivalent UK-born worker

85,000 British nationals left social care between 2021-2025, not because they didn’t want the work, but because wages weren’t viable. Migration became a substitute for fixing that

High net migration combined with an inelastic housing supply is directly driving up private rents and that cost lands on people already struggling

The OBR modelled that higher migration scenarios reduce borrowing by £19.9 billion by 2028-29

Link below ⬇️

https://youtu.be/\_c6O\_64JVDI?is=ZO2qnZC\_y1z3mRWe

The argument isn’t about whether migration is good or bad. It’s about whether the people who gain from it are ever made to share those gains with the people who bear the costs.

UK wages only just got back to 2008 levels. If pre-2008 growth had continued, you’d be earning £10,700 more per year right now.

The UK just had its biggest migration surge in recorded history. I broke down what the economics actually show