Member Article

Never Knowingly Underpaid: Waitrose shoppers expect to earn 9 per cent more this year

People who shop in Waitrose say they think they will earn nine per cent more by the end of the year - higher than any other supermarket shopper.

In a survey of 2,000 adults across the UK, commissioned by recruiter Randstad UK, Waitrose and Ocado shoppers said they thought they’d be earning between seven and nine per cent more in the next 12 months.

Co-op shoppers, however, said they’d be earning just 3 per cent more.

Victoria Short, the CEO of Randstad UK, says: “This goes to show how the cost of living crisis is going to bite. If inflation hits 9 per cent, even Waitrose shoppers are only going to be breaking even. The vast majority of people will find their earnings eroded as energy costs rise, food gets more expensive, and interest rates ramp up. Inflation is at a thirty-year high and is picking workers’ pockets. This year, real household disposable incomes are on track to suffer their largest fall since comparable records began in 1956. It’s going to hit the low-income households hardest.”

The research also found that 18 per cent of Iceland shoppers said they’d be earning less in 12 month’s time - even before adjusting earnings for inflation.

Victoria Short said: “People with lower-incomes are the ones most likely to expect their remuneration to drop. We aren’t saying that socio-economic backgrounds or elitism are the cause of these radically different pay forecasts. But there’s not much in the way of good news if Mum’s gone to Iceland. Iceland shoppers certainly don’t expect to be feeling the deal this year.”

The research also highlighted disparities in forecasts across different industries. A fifth of construction workers (20 per cent) said they thought their pay was going to decrease over the next 12 months - as did one in seven (14 per cent) tech workers.

Simon Harris, the boss of construction recruitment at Randstad UK said: “Construction workers shouldn’t be this pessimistic about pay: they are doing very well at the moment. The UK’s construction workforce is at max chat with HS2 - demand for their skills is absolutely sky high. I can only assume construction workers have been spooked by the cancellation of Northern Powerhouse Rail, the Golborne Spur, and HS2 2b to Leeds. The lack of government commitment can be unnerving.”

On the other hand, none of the social care employees polled expected their pay to fall (and said it would rise, on average, by 13 per cent) over the next 12 months. And only one in 20 engineers (five per cent) thought they’d be earning less in the next 12 months.

Adrian Smith, senior director of operations at Randstad UK, said: “Engineers are right to be confident about pay. Britain is in for a decade-long infrastructure boom, with the government forecast to make £650bn worth of investment in infrastructure over the next ten years. With government drives for digitisation and the “levelling up” agenda, it makes sense that engineers are so confident.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Raoul Duke .