The UK government’s partial public-sector pay freeze will hit workers who are already paid less than their counterparts in private companies, according to new research. A report by the Resolution Foundation suggests that the pay squeeze by the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, may not achieve his aim of narrowing the gap between government and private workers. The 2.6 million public sector workers whose pay will be frozen, including teachers and police, earn 7.9% less than their private sector counterparts once differences such as experience and location are taken into account, according to the analysis by the independent thinktank. In contrast, those 2.9 million public sector workers who will receive a pay rise, including all NHS workers and those earning less than £24,000 a year, receive 6.7% more their equivalents in the private sector. Sunak announced the partial pay freeze in a spending review last month as part of his response to the “economic emergency” created by the coronavirus pandemic. He said that pay rises for public sector workers – apart from NHS workers and the lowest-paid – could not be justified at a time when average earnings in the private sector were falling. “Coronavirus has deepened the disparity between public and private sector wages,” he said. For many years, public sector workers have earned more on average than their counterparts in the private sector. This is partly because the government workforce is generally older and also because many of the lowest-paid public service jobs are outsourced to private companies. The average weekly pay of private sector workers was £555 in October, according to the Office for National Statistics, compared with £569 for government workers. However, the government’s austerity pay freezes after the 2008 financial crisis have meant the “pay premium” for the public sector has fallen to zero once factors such as education and age are taken into account, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the tax and spending thinktank. Hannah Slaughter, an economist at the Resolution Foundation, said: “The government has justified the coming public sector pay freeze on the basis of the pay premium these workers will experience as a result of the pandemic. But this is a very poor description of the impact of the policy, with the freeze largely falling on those already experiencing pay penalties relative to the private sector. “Ministers must be mindful that while public and private sector pay do move in line with each other over the longer term, there are risks in making that adjustment next April, when the economic challenges of the pandemic will still be immense, and consumer confidence needs supporting.” The squeeze on real-terms pay for many government workers has come amid increased concern among Conservative party politicians about government borrowing, which has soared during the pandemic because of the emergency spending measures. The government expects to borrow £400bn this year, a peacetime record. Unions said the pay freeze was a “kick in the teeth”, especially for key workers who had played a vital role in fighting the pandemic. However, Sunak rejected accusations the measures were a return to the austerity policies of the former Conservative chancellor George Osborne.