THERE’S always a certain amount of spin in any media engagement in any campaign.

There is a significant effort being made by the Government to suggest public sector workers are generously off compared to other workers.

This is one of the major arguments regarding pensions and last week the Prime Minister claimed that according to the Office for National Statistics public sector pay is higher than that of private sector workers.

The implication is that ‘overly generous’ pay justifies the pay freeze, increased pension contributions and heightened risks of redundancy that workers across the public sector are currently being asked to bear.

But to claim that pay across the public sector is outstripping private sector earnings is simply wrong.If there is a premium, then it’s only in the lowest paid occupations that public sector workers may be paid more.

There are a number of factors that don’t allow for easy comparison between public and private sector pay. A higher proportion of degree-educated ‘professional’ staff are employed in the public sector, while the private sector has a greater proportion of low-skilled workers with no qualifications.

Simple average pay calculations are distorting and are being used to deliberately mislead.

Pay specialists IDS have recently pointed out: “… taking median gross hourly pay for all employees it shows average earnings 35% higher in the public sector, at £13.54 an hour compared to £10.06.

Taking gross annual earnings at the mean, however … shows 5% higher income in the private sector, at £27,195 compared to £25,892.

The figures the Prime Minister is using also includes workers in nationalised banks, which have a clear upward impact on public sector earnings, with 200,000 finance sector employees (the highest paid sector in the country) moving from the private to the public count.

It is these compositional differences which account for the vast majority of the pay differential between the sectors. As the IFS have concluded the raw differential does not take into account the fact that the skill compositions of the two sectors are markedly different: it is like using the average pay of neurosurgeons and the average pay of bartenders to conclude that neurosurgeons are overpaid!

Public sector workers have already borne the brunt of public spending cuts, instead of condemning them to further hardship the government should be speaking up for them and valuing their contribution to public services.

:: Kevin Rowan, Regional secretary, Northern TUC