UK state pension could rise by about £460 a year from April, wage growth figures suggest

The full UK state pension could rise by about £460 a year from April 2025, the latest wage growth figures suggest.
Average earnings including bonuses in the three months to July, which are used to calculate the pensions triple lock, grew by 4%, according to the Office for National Statistics, down from 4.6% year on year over the three months to June.
A commitment by the government to maintain the triple lock on the state pension, which guarantees annual increases in line with whichever is the higher of inflation, 2.5% or annual earnings, has boosted pension payments since it was introduced in 2012.
The annual inflation rate in September – published by the ONS next month – is the inflation figure used to calculate the triple lock, but wage growth in the three months to July is expected to be higher. UK inflation stands at 2.2%.
Labour said it would retain the triple lock for the rest of the parliament after it scrapped the winter fuel allowance for all pensioners in England and Wales except those on lower incomes who claim pension credit.
If confirmed, the changes would take the full state pension for men born after 1951 and women born after 1953 to nearly £12,000 in 2025, after a £900-a-year increase from April 2024.
The full state pension for people born after those dates stands at £221.20 a week. The full basic state pension for people born before those dates – almost three-quarters of the nearly 12.7m state pensioners – is £169.50. Under the older basic state pension system, people can receive extra money from the state based on their national insurance (NI) contributions.
A 4% increase would lift the full basic state pension to £176.30 a week, or £9,167 a year, a rise of £353.60. It would lift the full new state pension to £230.05 a week, or £11,962.60 a year.
The earnings figures also indicated that the jobs market had slowed, with employers shedding staff and a fall in the number of vacancies.
There were 857,000 job vacancies in June to August 2024, down 42,000 from the previous quarter and 143,000 lower than the same time last year, though still 61,000 above pre-Covid-19 levels.
A revised estimate of how many workers were on company payrolls in July fell by 6,000 from June. The ONS said a provisional estimate for August 2024 showed payroll numbers dropped even more, down a further 59,000. The unemployment rate dipped to 4.1%, from 4.2%.
Wages excluding bonuses grew by 5.1% in July, well above the rate of inflation but down from 5.4% in the previous three months. Bank of England policymakers are likely to be concerned that average wage growth excluding bonuses remains above 5% when they meet later this month to decide the level of interest rates.
However, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) said the central bank would be cheered by a faster than expected fall in pay growth across the services sector.
“Services sector pay growth has fallen faster than expected, recording 3.8%, compared to an average of 5.9% in the first five months of this year,” said Monica George Michail, a NIESR associate economist.
“This is positive news for inflation and might provide the Bank of England with increased confidence regarding interest rate cuts.”
The next cut by the Bank is expected in November, according to financial markets.
Ashley Webb, an economist at the consultancy Capital Economics, said the fall in average wages would not be enough to convince the Bank that the labour market was weakening significantly.
Several members of the Bank’s interest rate setting committee have argued that high wage rises are feeding into prices, pushing up inflation. They say wages need to fall further before they are prepared to vote for further cuts in the cost of borrowing.
Webb said: “The further easing in wage growth will be welcomed as a sign that labour market conditions are continuing to cool. But we doubt this will be enough to prompt a back-to-back 0.25 percentage point interest rate cut, from 5% to 4.75%, in September.”
Rachel Reeves said the government would stick with the state pension triple lock, despite needing to make savings, including restrictions on the winter fuel allowance “to repair the £22bn black hole in the public finances that we inherited from the previous government”.
The chancellor said the triple lock would put “more money in pensioners’ pockets each and every year, and it will mean the full new state pension will be worth around £1,700 more in 2029”.