THE worst pay squeeze in 200 years isn’t going anywhere, the TUC warned today after new figures showed further falls in take-home wages, rising unemployment and record numbers trapped on zero-hours contracts.

Despite record year-on-year pay growth of 7.8 per cent in the three months to June, real-terms salaries actually slumped by 0.6 per cent due to 40-year high inflation, the Office for National Statistics warned.

Unemployment, expected to remain unchanged, increased by 0.3 per cent to 4.2 per cent, it added, while the TUC noted that a whopping 1.2 million are now stuck in poorly paid precarious work.