A BBC article suggesting UK wages have risen at the “fastest rate since records began” has been slapped with a community note on Twitter X due to its somewhat misleading nature.
New figures have revealed that regular pay in Britain has experienced a robust increase of 7.8 per cent of late, marking the most substantial annual growth rate since the initiation of comparable records back in 2001, the BBC notes.
However, social media users were quick to spot a disparity between the headline and what the article says.
When inflation is taken into consideration (7.9 per cent), the so-called increase in wages is actually a pay CUT, which somewhat pours cold water over the Beeb’s hyperbolic headline.
Social media users were quick to catch on to the Twitter community note, with Matt Zarb-Cousin suggesting BBC Reality Check might want to pay some attention to the content on its own site.
Why are the latest figures important?
New inflation figures have been keenly awaited as policymakers look for significant signs that rampant inflation – which peaked at 11.1 per cent last year – is being tamed.
It was the second significant decline in as many months, after a drop to 7.9 per cent in June from 8.7 per cent a month earlier.
However, the latest reading was marginally above expectations and the ONS revealed that the rate of core inflation, which strips out volatile price movements in food and energy, was also higher than expected.
It means there could be continued pressure on the Bank of England to keep hiking interest rates, which have already reached a 15-year high of 5.25%, to keep inflation under control.
Do the latest figures mean the cost-of-living crisis is over?
Unfortunately not yet. Food price inflation is still high, at 14.9 per cent in July, down from 17.3 per cent in June.
While some commodity prices have dropped, there are still big rises being seen across many products and ingredients, while fertiliser costs have also soared, which is being passed down by farmers to retailers.
Some products such as sugar, yoghurt and fish also saw recent price increases accelerate last month.
In July, Britons benefited from a fall in energy bills, as the average price for each unit of electricity was slashed to 30p, while gas prices fell to 8p per unit, meaning the average annual energy bill for a household dropped to £2,074 from the capped rate of £2,500.
But it is still higher than the same month last year when it had been capped at an average £1,971 per household.
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