The UK’s new minimum wage ‘badly needed’ but many calling for more
Al Jazeera
UK’s new legal minimum wage gets a 9.8 percent rise, the highest boost since 2001. But with inflation, it’s not enough.
Keerthi Subramanian, a shop clerk in South London, earns 10.42 pounds ($13.15) an hour. From Monday that will go up by 1.02 pounds ($1.29) to 11.44 pounds ($14.44) as a new United Kingdom minimum wage kicks in. That is not much help, she says.
“At just over 10 pounds, I wasn’t earning enough. Everything from energy to food prices and rent have gone up in recent years,” Subramanian told Al Jazeera.
While the new legal minimum wage, also known as the National Living Wage (NLW), represents a 9.8 percent increase from previous levels – the highest single boost since 2001 – it is still insufficient for Subramanian. “All my charges have increased since COVID,” she said.
The boost to the NLW, worth 1,800 pounds ($2,271) a year for full-time workers, will benefit 2.7 million people, according to an estimate from the Department for Business and Trade.
The move is part of a 2019 Conservative Party pledge to raise the NLW to two-thirds of average earnings. In 2022, the OECD estimated that the UK’s minimum wage was equivalent to 58 percent of the median wage.
