New @ONS statistics on household incomes released today confirm continued weak household income growth BEFORE the Covid-19 crisis, with median incomes falling by 0.1% in 2019-20. (THREAD)

In our Livings Standards Outlook published earlier this week we estimated that median non-pensioner incomes grew by 0.7% in 2019-20 (compared to 1.2% in the ONS figures) - although we look at incomes AFTER housing costs, whereas the ONS figures do not.

Since the financial crisis in 2008, longer-term median income growth for working-age and pensioner households has remained relatively stagnant, with average income growth for all households averaging just 0.7% a year over the 10 years before 2019-20.

But it is the poorest households that have now seen no real-terms income growth since 2004-05, whereas the top of the distribution has seen growth of more than 8%.

The picture is even worse when focussing on working-age families, with average falls of 8% and 10% for households with and without children at the bottom of the distribution.