LONDON, Oct 28 (Reuters) – Britain’s finance minister John Healey said on Wednesday that the main minimum wage rate would increase by 3.9%. <\/p>\n
The rate paid to \u200cworkers aged 21 and over, currently \u00a312.71 an hour, and the rate payable \u200cto workers aged 18-20, now \u00a310.85, will both rise by 3.9%. Some analysts and employers had blamed larger jumps \u200bin the rate for younger workers for increasing youth unemployment. <\/p>\n
The increase means the National Living Wage will increase to \u00a313.21 an hour and the 18-20 National Minimum Wage will be \u00a311.27. <\/p>\n
“For 2.3 million of our lowest-paid workers, I’m increasing both the national minimum wage and the National Living \u200cWage by 3.9%,” Healey told \u2060lawmakers on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
In April, Britain’s Low Pay Commission \u2013 which advises on minimum wage rates \u2013 had said the National Living Wage would probably \u2060need to increase by around 3.7% in 2027 to \u00a313.18 an hour to keep up with how it expected average pay to rise. <\/p>\n
Britain’s main minimum wage rate has risen by around 50% \u200bsince 2020 \u200band is one of the highest among advanced \u200beconomies as a share of median \u200cearnings, following efforts by successive governments to lift it to two thirds of median hourly pay. <\/p>\n
Businesses, especially in lower-paying sectors such as retail and hospitality, have complained about the increased minimum wage and higher social security contributions, though there is no clear evidence that it has cost large numbers of jobs. <\/p>\n
Between 2024 and 2026, the minimum wage for \u200c18-20 year olds increased significantly faster than that \u200bfor older workers, and ahead of its 2024 election \u200bvictory, the Labour Party promised to \u200bscrap the lower rate which it called “discriminatory”. <\/p>\n
However, in March, the Labour \u200cgovernment tweaked the remit of the Low \u200bPay Commission to give \u200bit more scope to take labour market conditions into account when setting the minimum wage for 18-20 year olds. <\/p>\n
The most recent official data showed that average \u200bweekly earnings, excluding bonuses, rose \u200cby an annual 3.7% in the three months to August, while consumer \u200bprice inflation hit an 11-month high of 3.5% in September. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by David Milliken \u200band Sam Tobin, Editing by Kate Holton) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON, Oct 28 (Reuters) – Britain’s finance minister John Healey said on Wednesday that the main minimum wage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":817412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[11456,84,273,1294,4176,5555,1086,13908,5467,4377,1891,4517,4174,4769,4655,4204,4762,5556,5557,3356,5042,474,13909,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-817411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-401k","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-economy","tag-finance","tag-financial-information","tag-investing","tag-investment-tools","tag-investor","tag-market-news","tag-mortgage","tag-mutual-funds","tag-personal-finance","tag-quote","tag-real-estate","tag-retirement","tag-stock","tag-stock-research","tag-stock-valuation","tag-stocks","tag-suze-orman","tag-tax","tag-track-portfolio","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817411","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=817411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}