Real earnings for full-time workers in the UK have dipped back to the level they were more than a decade ago.
Earnings fell, in real terms, every year from 2008 to 2013, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Frozen salaries or low wage rises coupled with inflation indicate an overall fall of 8% in the last five years, bringing the real value of earnings back to the level of 2002.
The ONS said the drop in real earnings was due to the impact of the banking crisis and subsequent economic downturn.
It reported that the median level of full-time earnings in 2013 was £517 per week. The bottom 10% of employees earned less than £287 per week, while the top 10% earned more than £1,020 per week.
While sales staff and customer service staff are still the lowest paid, the ONS said that only 1.1% of all jobs - 279,000 – appeared to be paid below the national minimum wage in April last year, a proportion which the it said had remained "fairly constant" for several years.
The ONS also found that workers in the public sector still earn more than those in the private sector. This is due in part to a greater number of public sector jobs which require a university education.
