THE worsening cost-of-living crisis is already beginning to bite, unions warned today as official figures reveal that wages are massively failing to keep up with skyrocketing inflation.

The TUC said today’s Office for National Statistics figures, which show real-terms pay has fallen by 1.6 per cent over the last year, mark the worst fall in wages in eight years.

Average weekly earnings excluding bonuses were up 3.8 per cent between November 2021 and January this year, but experts warn that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could see prices rise by as much as 9 per cent. 

Eye-watering gas costs have already seen the consumer price index rate of inflation hit 5.5 per cent — a 30-year high.

Despite the growing burden on hard-pressed families, Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak has confirmed that he will still raise National Insurance contributions by 1.25 per cent from next month.

He acknowledged concerns about rising prices but praised “a year of falling unemployment” after the data suggested the jobless rate had fallen by 0.2 percentage points in the latest quarter.

But TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady demanded action in next week’s Spring Statement. 

“We need a plan to get wages rising, a boost to universal credit and a windfall tax on oil and gas profits — with the money raised going to energy grants for hard-pressed families.”

Labour, which has also called for a windfall tax on energy companies, said Conservative ministers “simply aren’t on the side of working people.”

GMB general secretary Gary Smith said that the erosion of Britain’s energy infrastructure during more than a decade of austerity had been a “chronic political failure” which had led to “utterly predictable” price shocks. 

He said: “Britain desperately needs a grown-up energy policy that lives in the real world, while workers need a proper pay rise that means they don’t have to choose between eating or heating.”

Unison general secretary Christina McAnea argued the thought of further below-inflation wage increases would be “chilling” for millions of public-sector workers who have endured years of pay freezes. 

The government must find the money to ensure that workers are “rewarded fairly and don’t leave for better-paid jobs elsewhere,” she demanded.

And the Prospect union, which represents specialists in both the public and private sectors, urged Whitehall to commit to a “long-term industrial strategy that raises investment, skills and productivity” nationwide.