Also, the college wage premium — the wage advantage held by college-educated workers over the less educated — grew much more slowly over the last decade compared to the prior 20 years, posing a challenge to the notion that skills can either explain or solve wage stagnation.
Nongovernmental groups and independent journalists said protesting workers were venting their rage at a government that had failed to solve a wage dispute involving a state-run employer.
Last night Gavin Kelly, chief executive of the foundation, who is a former deputy chief of staff to Gordon Brown at Number Ten, said there were no easy solutions to solve the "wage squeeze" on middle and low earners.
Unsurprisingly, his promise to solve the problem of unpaid wages and pensions has proved empty.
"We have to solve the problems of sliding wages and increased inequality, and you can't compromise on solving those problems," he said.
"It doesn't do a good job of addressing the problem we're trying to solve, which is not low wages, but low family income," he said.
He is, in other words, sidestepping the macroeconomic solutions that some advocates insist are the only way to solve the problem of poverty -- better wages, a national jobs program, a bigger earned-income tax credit -- in favor of programs that in one way or another directly affect the performance of the neighborhood's poor children.
Eurozone leaders' attempt to solve the crisis by "internal devaluation" – cutting wages and services across the southern periphery to restore competitiveness – was a "complete disaster", he said, that would deliver mass poverty and migration to the north.
Although Mr. Cunningham described the committee as broad-based, it is widely viewed by public-sector unions as a pro-business effort to solve the state's fiscal problems by slashing wages and benefits for public employees.
