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Pay award benchmark for 2019 is 2.5%

Employers are predicting that pay awards in 2019 will be at the same level as 2018 according to XpertHR.

Private-sector employers expect to give employees a 2.5% pay rise over the coming year. This is unchanged on the figure recorded by XpertHR for 2018 as a whole, ‘suggesting that Brexit uncertainty and affordability issues are balanced by record high employment levels when it comes to making pay awards’.

XpertHR shows a 2.5% median basic pay award across the economy for the three months ending February 2019, with the middle half of pay awards (the interquartile range) worth between 2.1% and 3%. Within the private sector, the 2.5% figure is also recorded for pay awards in manufacturing-and-production firms, while private-sector-services employers report a median 2.7% increase. 

Analysis from the Labour Research Department shows that for the three months from December to February 2019, the median standard increase was 2.8%.