London — British workers are suffering from an increasingly tight squeeze in their spending power, data showed on Wednesday, adding to concerns about a slowdown in the world’s fifth-biggest economy and to the challenges for a weakened Prime Minister Theresa May. A fall of 0.4% in wage growth in the three months to April, when adjusted for inflation, represented the biggest loss of real earnings for households since 2014, even as a joint record high proportion of people in Britain are in work. Britain’s economy withstood the shock of last year’s Brexit in 2016, prompting some supporters of Brexit to say fears of a hit to the economy were overblown. But growth slowed sharply in early 2017 as consumers felt the pinch of rising inflation caused by the fall in the value of the pound after the referendum. Credit card firm Visa said on Monday it saw the first annual fall in spending by consumers in nearly four years in May. Other rich countries around the world are also struggling with the...
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