I'd be quite interested to see the comparisons they make and the raw data they use.

When I worked in the public sector the minimum wage came in and boosted a lot of the low grades pay levels. At the time this was said to be an embarrassment for the government as the minimum wage did little to similarly skilled workers outside of the public sector.

Indeed where I worked practically any of the staff could work for substantially more in an equivalent role in a private firm.

Teachers seem to get less money often in private sector, but benefits of shorter terms, better discipline, better working conditions and the like help considerably. Nurses in private employment seem to get quite a bit more.

What's equivalent to the police force?

Armed forces are supposedly poorly paid, but they get bed and board too.

>The report said the gap - or pay premium - between what a typical public sector worker earns above their equivalent in the private sector has increased to 16.5% over the past two years for salaried workers.

But it says this has risen by 35% for workers paid by the hour, despite efforts by the government to reduce the public sector wage bill.*

At the same time, real pay has fallen for the bottom 30% of private sector workers.

/ Is this a case of damn lies and statistics. If private sector pay falls then the gap widens, no? Is this article just about falling private sector pay due to recession?

Don't post reports from centre right think tanks if you want to be balanced. You could find an opposing report from a think tank on the other side of the spectrum.

Policy Exchange are a Tory think tank and are generally seen to be full of shite. Of course they're going to be trying to create a wedge between private and public sector workers. The reality is that everyone is being screwed by the people at the top, and they know that if they divide us up and get the private sector to hate the unions, and think that they're getting a better deal somehow, the anger about cuts and rising food prices and whatnot is going to be directed onto other people at the bottom, instead of the true tyrants here. Read what the TUC says in the rest of the article.