AXA’s dodgy public sector pay stats

23 Mar 2010, by Nigel Stanley in Pensions & Investment

I’ve got a guest post at Left Foot Forwards looking at today’s Daily Mail story on public sector pensions.

Over there I’ve concentrated on the pensions aspects, but I was also struck by this quote:

Paul McMahon, managing director of AXA Corporate Benefits, said: ‘Historically, the more generous nature of public sector pension schemes was put down to the fact that their salary levels were lower.

‘However, this is no longer the case, with the average salary in the public sector now exceeding the private sector.

This is not the case. Hourly median public sector wages are higher than in the private sector but have been since these statistics began in 1984.

We will try and find out whether AXA can justify their figures.

I suspect that their many customers in the public sector would not want to see their business going to a company trying to undermine their pay and pensions.

UPDATE: it gets worse…