'Employers must step up' | 4.5m UK workers earning below real Living Wage

2024 saw the largest annual rise in the number and proportion of jobs paid below the real Living Wage ever recorded. 

New analysis of the latest Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), by the Living Wage Foundation, reveals that 4.5 million UK jobs, or nearly one in six (15.7%), were low paid in April 2024, up from 3.7 million, or one in eight (13.0%), compared to a year earlier. This is an increase of 800,000 low paid jobs. 

The real Living Wage is the only UK wage rate calculated based on what it costs to live. These findings reveal that more jobs have fallen below this rate as wages have failed to keep up with costs, pushing more and more workers into in-work poverty. 

The news runs counter to findings that the number of workers paid below two thirds of median earnings – a less robust measure of low pay that the government’s minimum wage is tied to - is at its lowest level since 1997, and that average wage growth is outstripping inflation.