New Year is a good time to take stock of the recent past and make new resolutions for the future.

So, let’s take stock of wages for workers across Scotland.

The latest figures show that monthly pay for the average employee in Scotland was £2,526 in November, an increase of 7.3 per cent compared with November 2023. This is higher than the growth in pay for the UK over the same period (6.3 per cent).

Positive you might say?

Well yes, 2024 was the first in several years that wages actually grew at a higher rate than inflation. The figures also suggest that Scotland’s more progressive tax policy than the rest of the UK has not had the catastrophic impact on earnings that some siren voices suggested.

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Indeed, since April, when the Scottish Government introduced its new advanced rate for those earning between £75,000-125,000, Scotland has seen median pay increase 5.4% in Scotland compared to 4.1% across the UK. While further analysis is needed, this is hopefully good news for the Scottish Government’s coffers, and highlights that we need to base our tax policy on empirical evidence, not uncertain behavioural assumptions.

However, most of us won’t be cracking out the bubbly just yet.

While real wages have recovered this year, they remain below where they were three years ago. Had earnings tracked inflation since the start of 2022, workers would have earned an extra £2,500 – £5,000 over those three years.

It’s worth remembering that this cost-of-living crisis follows a disastrous period of pay growth following the financial crisis and........

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