News Letter breaks down public sector pay versus private sector pay in wake of large-scale strike action

The most recent data was released in November, and it shows that weekly pay in the public sector was £625.50, but in the private sector it was £501.90.

Looking at annual gross pay, the median in the public sector at £31,839, and in the private sector it was £25,467.

The median is the "middle" number in a series, when those numbers are listed in order from smallest to greatest.

When you look at the average pay, the average is £33,873 per year in the public sector, and £31,190 in the private sector.

Private sector workers also worked slightly longer hours on average: 37.4 per week, compared with 37 in the public sector.

However, NISRA also found that while private sector pay has gone up quite notably in the last year, public sector pay has stagnated (and in fact has been stagnating for 20 years).

Its November bulletin said: "Increases in weekly earnings were recorded for both the public and the private sectors (0.1% and 9.3% respectively) over the year.

"The larger growth in the private sector has led to the smallest percentage difference in 20 years between the two sectors in NI (approximately 22%)…

"Over the year to 2023, real earnings in the public sector fell by 7.2%, which was in contrast to an increase of 1.4% in the private sector.

"Over the last two decades, real earnings in the public sector showed no growth, compared to a growth of 13% in real earnings in the private sector since 2003."

On the subject of pensions, around 92% of public sector workers in Northern Ireland have a pension, compared with only 62% of private ones.

Though there are no Northern Ireland-specific figures, at a UK-wide level the Office for National Statistics says the average value of a public sector pension was £65,400 compared with £10,300 in the private sector.

Dr Birnie, who works at Ulster University and is also a former UUP MLA, said: “It’s important to take a balanced view on all of this.

"Some people in NI's 220,000 strong public sector are on the National Living Wage.

"In a deep sense, the problem is less that our public sector is ‘overpaid’ and more that in the private sector wages are sometimes low, a reflection of decades of comparatively low productivity (output per worker)."

"Still, especially in the light of yesterday's general strike and threats of more to come, it is necessary to remember some in NI's public sector are better off comparatively relative to their private sector counterparts.

"And in the NI private sector notions of ‘pay parity’ with GB wouldn't cut much ice, it is whatever the market can bear.”