People often talk about ‘the minimum wage’ as if it is a single thing, but in the UK there are actually four different minimum wages. There is the national living wage of £12.21 per hour, which employers must pay any employee aged 21 and over. This is often what people refer to as ‘the minimum wage.’ Then, there are separate minimum wages for staff aged 18 to 20 (£10 per hour), staff aged 16 to 17 (£7.55 per hour) and apprentices under 19 or in the first year of their apprenticeship (also £7.55 per hour). There is no minimum wage for young people under 16, although there are restrictions on the hours they can work and the types of work they can do.
This may strike you as unfair. Why does the government allow younger workers to be paid so much less? There have long been campaigns to equalise the minimum wage rates on the grounds of fairness. In 2024, three quarters of 16-to 17-year-old workers and half of 18-to 20-year-old workers were paid below the 21+ minimum wage rate. Some argue that the government could raise wages for these groups with limited negative effects if it equalised the wage rates.
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