The median weekly earnings for full-time employees working in accommodation and food service roles have seen a 18.1% decline since 2019, according to research by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Its Employee earnings in the UK: 2020 report, published November 2020, which uses data from the Annual survey of hours and earnings (ASHE), included the 8.8 million UK employees that were furloughed during the Covid-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic.
Due to the implications of the Coronavirus crisis, employees working across all sectors saw a 20% decrease in hours worked compared to 2019, however overall paid hours only saw a 1.5% decline, with median weekly pay not being affected.
Median annual pay for employees working full-time was £31,461, an increase of 3.6% on the previous year. In the UK the median weekly earnings for full-time employees was £586 as at April 2020, a 0.1% improvement since 2019. ONS found that these data points were largely unaffected by the Coronavirus pandemic.
Furthermore, median pay for part-time employees increased by 3%, a similar trend to the years before.
London has the highest median earnings for full-time employees as at April 2020, with staff earning £640 per week, compared to South East (£498), and the whole of the UK (£479). Since 2019, full-time employees in the East Midlands and Scotland saw the highest growth in meaning earnings, at 2.6% and 2.5%.
A spokesperson at ONS said: “The effect that the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) had in April is clear. Employees being placed on the scheme prevented paid hours falling at the rate shown by the actual number of hours worked, as reported in the Labour Force Survey.
“In industries such as education, the difference between median weekly pay and number of hours paid for, on one hand, and actual hours worked on the other was more marked, indicating that the majority of employees were either given their usual hours of work or were furloughed.
“However, in accommodation and food services and, to a lesser extent, construction, and administrative and support services, there was a more notable fall in paid hours, which would reflect situations such as employers wanting staff to work but being unable to offer them their usual hours.”