Well-to-do media commentators can hardly contain their excitement as they announce an economic recovery well on track now average pay rises have finally overtaken the official inflation rate.

Nothing better illustrates the truism that there are lies, damned lies and official statistics.

For a start, new Labour's replacement of the RPI measure, which includes housing costs, by CPI has always understated the rate of inflation for working people.

That's why it was so readily welcomed by George Osborne and his multimillionaire Treasury team.

RPI records an inflation of rate of 2.5 per cent, indicating that the burden of housing costs weighs heavily on the working class, especially since wage growth - excluding bonuses that apply to a small section of the workforce - is just 1.4 per cent.

Even if the magic moment of average pay rises overtaking inflation had indeed been reached, this would not demand a day of celebration.

Every month for the past six years, since the private banking sector holed the economy below the waterline, rising prices have outstripped wages.

Workers, pensioners and benefits claimants have seen an inexorable reduction in disposable income throughout this period, resulting in an exponential recourse to food banks by poor people.

It will take more than a statistical coincidence of pay and prices meeting on a graph to excite choruses of Happy Days Are Here Again.

Some firms are indeed taking on new staff or increasing pay, which is good news, but it's not the whole story.

Ministers like to portray self-employment reaching its highest ever level, peaking at 4.5 million, as evidence of a new spirit of entrepreneurialism.

The biggest factor pushing people into working for themselves is the recognition that too many jobs on offer are minimum-wage, part-time, temporary or even zero-hours.

A million part-time workers want to work full-time but are denied the opportunity. A further million have seen their salaries slide below the living wage level under this conservative coalition government.

Worst of all, our young people remain abandoned and abused, with nearly 900,000 out of a job and little to look forward to beyond dispiriting short-term work experience or "training" schemes.

For average wages to have risen 1.4 per cent, someone must have been paid more, but it's not the government's own employees or those working elsewhere in the public sector, over whom the long-term pay freeze backed by all major parliamentary parties still holds sway.

Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are continuing Labour's "cost of living" offensive, but this will be insufficient to defeat the Tories and Liberal Democrats at the general election.

Unless Labour carves out a distinctive approach setting itself apart from the conservative coalition parties and enthusing its alienated electoral base, David Cameron will return in triumph to No 10.

In recent weeks, the Labour leadership has ducked political challenges over the Royal Mail privatisation rip-off, the abandonment of two out of Britain's last three deep-mined pits and the plan to expedite new long-term franchises for rail privateers.

Instead of pledging to plug tax-avoidance loopholes and transfer the burden of taxation from poor to rich, the two Eds have been tongue-tied in the face of Osborne's spurious insistence that he will chase wealthy tax dodgers.

In short, if Labour's economic approach for the election adds up to "steady as she goes but not quite so nasty," it will lose and fully deserve to do so.