I took a quick glimpse at the Average Weekly Earnings figures out today to see if there was an obvious sign of downward pressure on those employed in construction.

Well comparing the average weekly earnings over the three months to this April with the same period a year ago we get a rise of 1.7%.

So on average people in construction earn more cash now than they did a year ago. Less in real terms, if you peg it to the CPI measure of inflation. More if you peg it to RPI. And about the same if you measure against RPIX, which is commonly used in these sorts of situations.

From that exhaustive piece of analysis let’s just say wages are about the same in real terms.

Now there are plenty of reasons for wages on average not to fall, despite the huge apparent downward pressure of a rapid increase in redundancies and rapidly shrinking job opportunities.

The most obvious might be that people are getting more cash in their wage packets.

But there are others.

I have long been suspicious of platitudes suggesting this is a white collar recession.

Perhaps the average wage in construction is holding up because it is those at the bottom that are disproportionately feeling the cold steel of the flailing axe.

Just a thought.