Pay gap between Northern Ireland’s public and private sector workers higher than ever

From the Belfast Telegraph: The pay gap between Northern Ireland’s public and private sector workers is wider than at any time since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. The average full-time public sector worker here now earns a staggering 45% more than an employee in the private sector. In the rest of … Continue reading “Pay gap between Northern Ireland’s public and private sector workers higher than ever”

From the Belfast Telegraph:

The pay gap between Northern Ireland’s public and private sector workers is wider than at any time since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

The average full-time public sector worker here now earns a staggering 45% more than an employee in the private sector. In the rest of the UK the difference is just 17.8%.

NI public sector represents 30% of the employed workforce but 60% of the economy. Considering the private sector pays for the public sector, does anyone think this is unsustainable? And when the English cut the Block Grant and the discrepancy is actually felt locally?

BOOM.

0 thoughts on “Pay gap between Northern Ireland’s public and private sector workers higher than ever”

  1. And yet I find it difficult to persuade application developers working for the FDIs in Belfast to come and work with me in the education sector. They generally tell me it would involve taking a pay cut.

    Something doesn’t compute.

      1. I am probably being quite selfish, but my focus at the moment is purely on application developers (and possibly some enterprise infrastructure folks too). Maybe this makes my comments inappropriate as the figures include such a wide range of professions such as doctors, nurses and teachers.

        However, given the oft-bemoaned lack of a serious indigenous software industry (Kainos, Asidua and a handful of others notwithstanding) it seems to me that most software engineers are working for FDIs.

        Happy to be wrong if the figures say otherwise.

  2. I think our sector is probably on the value side being equivalent or maybe even better than public sector (more due to the low value placed on software devs in NI public sector).

    But we don’t have anywhere near enough of these high-value private sector jobs. We have an abundance of low value (minimum wage) jobs.

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