It’s entirely true that public sector wages, properly measured, are higher than private sector:

It is true that the pay of public sector workers has been squeezed, relative to the private sector, since the Conservatives came to power in 2010. But at that point what the Office for National Statistics calls the “modelled average public sector earnings premium” (compared with the equivalent job in the private sector) had risen to 10 per cent. Given the typically superior job security, holiday allowances and, above all, pensions in the public sector, that was clearly unsustainable.

That is after all those necessary adjustments for age, jobs done, educational levels and so on. They, being paid by us, are living better than we do.

However, there is still that trick being missed:

One thing these disparate groups have in common is a form of pension that has now all but disappeared outside the public sector: the TOCs’ employees are highly unusual in this respect. I mean the defined-benefit variety, whose beneficiaries are guaranteed a pension linked to their earnings and indexed to inflation.

Yes, entirely so. But isn’t that included in the ONS calculation? It does say including pensions, doesn’t it? Well, no:

Employer and employee pension contributions

For ONS is measuring what is paid for those pensions, not the value of what is received in those pensions. The point being that - as a result of taxpayer subsidy, of course - each £ of public sector pension contribution buys more value in pension paid than the equivalent £ paid in the private sector does. Because defined benefit pensions are more valuable than defined contribution ones.

The truth is that - on average and across the sector - public sector workers are vastly better paid than private sector. Over and above that measured premium and as a result of the greater value of pensions paid, rather than pensions paid for. At which point, of course, it’s possible to ponder whether that earnings gulf is something we’d like to continue.

Possibly, when the economy is less than stellar, we should be asking the public sector to share our pain? Or at least, force them to tell us, in detail, why they shouldn’t?