It was announced this week that the national minimum wage (NMW) will increase for adults by 3 per cent, or 19p an hour, taking it to \u00a36.50, while the rate for 18 to 20-year-olds will rise by 10p to \u00a35.13, an increase of 2 per cent.<\/p>\n
Young workers aged between 16 and 17 will be entitled to 7p an hour more, taking their rate to \u00a33.79, also a 2 per cent increase, and apprentices will earn an extra 5p an hour, taking their wages to at least \u00a32.73.<\/p>\n
It is the first time in six years that the rise in the rate will be higher than inflation, which, using the consumer prices index, is currently 1.9 per cent. The 3 per cent rise was recommended by the Low Pay Commission (LPC), which sets the NMW and was readily accepted by Business Secretary Vince Cable.<\/p>\n
Dr Cable said he was delighted that the Government\u2019s acceptance of the rise means that more than a million low-paid workers will enjoy the biggest cash increase in their take-home pay since 2008.<\/p>\n
He added that the LPC’s new forward guidance gives the UK a much better understanding of how an economic recovery can be translated into faster and significant increases in the national minimum wage for low-paid workers, without costing jobs.<\/p>\n
The Business Secretary also suggested that firms should think of ways to help all their staff, not just those on the minimum wage, share in the benefits of the economic recovery.<\/p>\n
However, the LPC\u2019s founding Chair, Professor Sir George Bain, said that the NMW is in need of major reform and has recommended that there should be a \u201cspecial case\u201d for London to have a higher NMW and that the LPC should give longer-term forecasts for the benchmark rate to help employers plan for the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was announced this week that the national minimum wage (NMW) will increase for adults by 3 per cent, or 19p an hour, taking it to \u00a36.50, while the rate for 18 to 20-year-olds will rise by 10p to \u00a35.13, an increase of 2 per cent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions\/135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}