Almost half of businesses are not offering, or planning to offer, pay rises, research shows.

Almost half of businesses are not offering, or planning to offer, pay rises, research from the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) has shown.

The poll of more than 1,000 UK-based managers found that one in three were concerned about the financial performance of their organisations and, as a result, 48 per cent were not planning to give pay rises this year.

Among the organisations that were increasing pay, the average pay award was just 2.8 per cent, lagging far behind inflation.

Almost three in five (57 per cent) managers surveyed by the CMI said their organisation had not taken or had no plans to take any action on rising business costs.

The CMI’s data on the absence of pay rises appears to run against figures from the Office for National Statistics, which found that nominal pay grew 4.1 per cent in the year to January 2022, compared to an average of just 2 per cent in the decade before the pandemic.