{"id":432004,"date":"2026-02-18T09:06:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T09:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/432004\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T09:06:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T09:06:07","slug":"plan-to-increase-youth-minimum-wage-could-be-delayed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/432004\/","title":{"rendered":"Plan to increase youth minimum wage could be delayed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It comes after new job figures confirmed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c3wl17l3ggqo\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">young people are the most likely to struggle in the UK job market<\/a>, with 16.1% of people aged 16 to 24 unemployed compared to a national average of 5.1%.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">On Tuesday, it was confirmed unemployment had risen to a near five-year high, with the jobless rate among young people at its worst level for more than a decade.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the rate of unemployment rose to 5.2% in the three months to December, up from 5.1% in the three months to November.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Under existing rules, people aged over 21 must be paid \u00a312.21 an hour, with a lower rate of \u00a310 in place for 18 to 20-year-olds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Some business figures have argued that moves to push up minimum wage rates by the government have increased costs and deterred hiring. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.com\/uk\/politics\/article\/labour-minimum-wage-business-warning-0tm2fjk3n\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Times newspaper, external<\/a> first reported that minister were weighing up whether to drop the pledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It comes after new job figures confirmed young people are the most likely to struggle in the UK&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-432004","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}