Living Wage rises to £9 an hour

The voluntary Living Wage has increased to £9 an hour around the UK and £10.55 in London.

The Living Wage figures are based on an independent calculation of what people need to live in the UK and London and were introduced to tackle poverty wages. They differ from the Government’s National Minimum Wage which it calls the National Living Wage.

The UK rate has increased by 25p from £8.75 to £9 with the London Living Wage rising by 35p an hour from £10.20 to £10.55 an hour.

Research by KPMG found over a fifth of jobs pay less than the real Living Wage, with 1.2 million more jobs paying below the Living Wage since 2012. Research for the Living Wage Foundation found that if local authorities, universities and sports facilities (including football clubs) in towns and cities across the country signed up to the Living Wage, an additional 480,000 low paid workers could benefit.

More than 1,200 employers have now signed up to the Living Wage. They include IKEA, Aviva, Nationwide and Google, as well as thousands of small businesses.

The news come as Office for National Statistics figures for last year show almost 32% of British workers were given an increase that was less than one-third of the inflation rate, which reached 3.1% in November 2017.

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