The median pay increase in the private sector across the past three months has been 2.1%, compared to 1% for public sector workers.
The industry with the largest median pay award is manufacturing and production, with the average increase reaching 2.7%. This is the highest since June 2013.
Fewer than one in 10 employees (7.1%) saw their pay frozen in the second quarter of 2014, while one-quarter (25%) saw their pay increase by 2.8% or more across the same period.
XPertHR pay and benefits editor Sheila Attwood called the pay awards "encouraging".
"Higher awards are being made and fewer employers are making pay freezes," she said. "As attention starts to turn to the New Year wage round, we are hopeful that we will see an upturn in settlement levels during 2015."
TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady criticised the government for "excluding public sector workers from the economic recovery".
"The bigger economic problem remains," she said. "The UK has become an economy good at creating poorly paid, low-productivity, insecure jobs – but this is no basis for a successful economy in the long-term.”
