Aren't public sector workers doing well? Private sector employees may have that impression after mulling over earnings figures released by the Office of National Statistics last week.
The Daily Telegraph reported data showing that the average public sector worker earned £23,660 a year, £2,132 more than their private sector counterpart - a record gap.
It is unlikely that many public sector staff would have recognised this gap, coming as it did in a week when it was announced that local authority staff, including social workers, faced a pay freeze and investment bank Goldman Sachs, which employs 5,500 people in the UK, unveiled a multi-billion pound bonus package.
Trade union Unite called the comparative figures a distortion because they failed to take into account the increase in part-time working in the private sector, which has the effect of lowering the average wage, and, in any case, bonuses are excluded from the data.
In addition, Unite cites the difficulty in making like-for-like comparisons between jobs in the respective sectors.
But an important difference is the private sector's huge differential between high and low earners. Compare the remuneration in the City and that endured by care home workers and domiciliary care staff, many of whom see their terms and conditions deteriorate as contracts are outsourced.
More interesting would be to examine the number of people in the private sector earning more than, say £100,000, compared with the number in the public sector.
Of even more interest would be the number of low earners, say below £15,000.
It might even provide the answer to why the average earnings are comparatively lower in the private sector.
I'm happy to have my pay frozen...
provided all doctors, solicitors etc are in the same boat!