NMW to increase again next year to £12.21 ph.

But if its rarely increased, people* will not have enough year on year to pay the basic bills. Our fuel bills always increase every year, the food bill gets larger, house repairs, travel costs et al. Basically nothing ever decreases in cost, so for someone on nlw to get no increase for years at a time will mean a couple of years in they won't have enough for basics.

• mainly thinking of those on no benefits as benefits generally and usually increase year on year.

And nurseries can't afford to pay more due to lack of funding. It's a vicious circle, put wages up without additional funding and parents will be asked for bigger top up fees.

Because it’s impossible to live on the current minimum wage??

In the civil service there are hundreds of staff who will get a payrise because they are currently on less than £12.21 an hour. Stressful customer facing frontline roles.

Germany has just gone into recession BTW although I know mumsnetters love to trumpet it as the perfect economy.

Well said! The joke is we were told that one of the benefits of Brexit was that we'd all get higher wages, yet here we are trailing behind our European neighbours.

This whole thread just shows how awful the UK has become in comparison to its (former) peers. Wages have been stagnant for almost twenty years now. The problem is not that minimum wage is going up, it’s that wages for better qualified jobs are shockingly low. Average salaries in the UK are now something like £7000 a year lower than in Germany, for instance. Shocking.

the problem isn’t putting the NMW up, the problem is the total lack of investment in the economic, in infrastructure, in building things, in innovation, for the last fifteen years

https://www.nao.org.uk/press-releases/small-businesses-evading-tax-leave-hmrc-billions-out-of-pocket/#:~:text=HMRC%20estimated%20%C2%A35.5%20billion,%25%20in%202019%2D20).

£5.5 billion last from business tax fraud with small businesses very much part of it. Personally I’d base anger there as opposed to the lowest paid getting a measly 80p rise.

Wonderful - you're quite happy with people in this country earning a pittance so you can buy your artisan jam and woven goat hair plimsolls locally.

It's OK other people working for a low NMW, just as long as it's not you. Terrific.

I completely agree we shouldn’t have a low wage economy. The job my dd gets paid 21k a year for here would be 90-100k Canadian dollars in Canada. Even allowing for exchange rates it’s a higher wage. But when she goes to Canada to visit her boyfriend everything is double the price 🤷🏻‍♀️. He loves coming here as stuff is so cheap. As wages increase prices will increase. Whether that’s better or not I have no idea.

The problem is everything goes up. So once this kicks in you can expect a further increase in commodities and utilities, so then minimum wage, still retains the same 'value' while other higher wages decrease in real terms.
Smaller businesses will go out of business which will cost the tax payer money and be stressful for all involved, and larger companies will ship employment off to cheaper countries. Furthermore a reduction in smaller businesses means the bigger corporations can dominate and lack of competitors, means increased prices.
The problem with having lawyers running a country is their lack of economic and business understanding. A service industry, which is what we are rapidly becoming, doesn't tend to bode well for economic growth.

On the other hand, low wages keep inflation down. No one wants high inflation rates.

No but minimum wage goes up because rental costs go up. I have been told in the past by multiple letting agents that rents are so high because landlords can't decline benefit applicants but they can price them out of the property, so they do. They set the rent far in excess of the UC top up so claimants can't apply for their property. That is what needs regulating

Absolutely.

There is also the zero hours contract culture here.

Businesses can afford to keep people on call for a few hours a week because of the benefits top up.

I don't disagree with much of what you say. The early years sector has been running on empty for years. It has huge problems with retainment and recruitment and there is increased pressure on remaining staff already in a demanding and stressful role.It is a massively undervalued sector in this country and unless this changes we will end up with institutions where child care is simply crowd control.

Early years education needs to come under state education and I think labour are planning that with opening nurseries in schools. It seems odd childcare is universal from 5 but means tested below that. Increasing nmw was a clever way to raise a lot of tax.

Rental costs don't go up because of minimum wage increases

They go up because it's a wild unregulated market

Decades ago rents were reasonable as anyone who needed it could get a bit for profit rental home

Everything is connected - we need people to earn enough to live and if you are saying that sone people MUST live in poverty for the country to operate, go and think again please- that's not a country I'd have any pride in

😅😅

Reads that way.

Yes, and costs for everyone spiral, be it benefits or anyone who rents.

The actual problem that the early years sector is undervalued, underfunded, underpaid and dangerously understaffed because practitioners are leaving the profession in droves?

You get to keep more of your wage if you have a mortgage but yes I think it is wrong.

What personal info have I offered? I said I work, I get UC and I went on holiday. It’s not me asking for anyone’s financial details.

Which puts rental prices up further because people need subsidising to afford the astronomical rental prices.

Yes agreed. Anyone can fall on hard times.