One in three workers earn less than a living wage and struggle to make ends meet, according to new research led by University College Dublin.<\/p>\n
The Working Life on Low Pay Report found that over 30% of workers in a full-time job earn less than the real living wage would pay.<\/p>\n
According to the study, between 13% and 32% of employees have low weekly earnings, depending on the threshold used.<\/p>\n
Almost one in four earn less than two-thirds of the median weekly wage, the conventional measure of low pay.<\/p>\n
Researchers found that low pay is about hours, not just the hourly rate.<\/p>\n
“While seven in ten low-paid workers earn more than the national minimum wage per hour, their pay is low because they work too few hours in the week,” the report found.<\/p>\n
“Just over half of the low paid work part-time, and more than three-quarters of those on 17 to 24 hours a week are low paid.”<\/p>\n
The study also found that women are hit hardest.<\/p>\n
“Almost one in three women are low paid as against 17% of men,” according to the study.<\/p>\n
It found that 59% of low-paid workers are under 25 and around half of are over 65.<\/p>\n
Three sectors hold more than half of the low paid and these are retail, hospitality, and health and social care.<\/p>\n
The border region has the highest rate of low pay, according to the report, which also found that low-paid work is of poor quality.<\/p>\n
“There are few opportunities for training and development, one in four go home physically exhausted most or all of the time, one-third have been shouted at or verbally abused at work in the past year, and nearly one in three struggle to make ends meet,” the study found.<\/p>\n
Dr Lisa Wilson, Senior Economist at the NERI and Adjunct Associate Professor at UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School said the Government’s commitment to move the minimum wage towards a living wage is the right one.<\/p>\n
“But most of Ireland’s low-paid workers are not on the minimum wage,” Dr Wilson said.<\/p>\n
“They are above it, on hours that do not add up to a living wage, in jobs they are prepared to work hard in but that offer little training or development in return.”<\/p>\n
“Improving their position means looking at the broader conditions of these jobs, and not only the price of an hour at the minimum,” she added.<\/p>\n
The Working Life on Low Pay report is based on findings from the Working in Ireland Survey 2025 which was administered to 3,040 workers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One in three workers earn less than a living wage and struggle to make ends meet, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-631023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}