Analysis

Nurse pay: what it would be now if it had kept pace with inflation

Nurses and the rest of the nursing team in the NHS have seen pay fall in real terms in recent years. This infographic looks at how Agenda for Change salaries have fallen behind inflation since 2010 and sets out what salaries would have been, if only they had kept pace with inflation. The measure of inflation is a point of contention between unions – which prefer the retail prices index (RPI) – and government, which uses the consumer prices index (CPI). This article shows how ministers’ use of the CPI in setting NHS pay arguably hides the full extent of the real-terms decline in nursing pay.

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Nurse pay and below-inflation pay awards: graphic arrows, a bag of shopping and a pound sign show how steeply rising prices will devalue salaries that increase more gently

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