National Minimum Wage Increase

[good96]

With the NMW increase from April 2025 rising to £12.21 - for someone who works 40 hours a week - that is £25,400!

Can see so many businesses struggling/restructuring/redundancies after this!

Wages seem to have become very depressed lately

yep, wages have stagnated for years.

for someone who works 40 hours a week - that is £25,400!

which is a pretty crap salary. Allowing for inflation it’s the equivalent of 20,500 in 2020 & 13,800 in the early 00s

No one works 52 weeks a year. There are 4 - 5 weeks holidays plus public holidays.

Why do people always punch down? Fair pay is a right, people on NMW are struggling to keep their homes and pay their bills. If you don't think it's fair people are paid enough to live on then that's pretty pathetic.

NMW goes up the amount paid out in UC and tax credits goes down.

Rumpoleoftheballet · Today 23:33

MrsSkylerWhite · Today 23:24
Good. About bloody time.
Small business owners should not be succeeding on the backs of employees who are struggling to get by,

Yes because every single small business owner is loaded and doing just fine 🙄

So it’s fine to exploit people if they’re not?
(No, it isn’t, if you’re struggling with that one). If you can’t afford to pay your staff a living wage, your business isn’t viable.

The freezing of tax thresholds or fiscal drag has a disproportionate impact on low-paid workers.

For example, a person in the lowest decile has seen their tax bill increase from £1,624 to £2,906, which is an increase of 37.7%.

Whilst I also welcome the rise in the NMW it does look very much like the Government asking employers to pay their employees more just so that the Government can then take more in taxation.

Yes and they (in their incredibly small number, after all don't even students have a life they need to plan work hours and wages around?) will be able to keep them when the change comes, just those who want and need more certainty and security of hours and wages will be able to get them, now doesn't that sound entirely reasonable?

So many fat cat tories on this thread 🤮🤮🤮

Whilst everyone orders everything off Amazon/Temu/Shein!! It’s all well and good everyone saying that SME in this country should pay a decent wage but while we are happy to order or all stiff off cheap import sights where children are paid a few pence and hour and where we happily pay immigrants below MW cash in hand - how does that work?! If we are shrieking that people who put their hand in their pocket, risk it all are only in a ‘legitimate’ business if they pay ‘adequate’, why is thee no equal push to say we as consumers should be willing to pay a fair price then?

Who cares?.They knew the risks when they opened a businesses. If they leave a gap they'll be replaced if they don't they won't, twas ever thus.

If they didn't themselves back in the employment market then I'm sure they'll finally see some value to the labour laws and wage protections they thought so unneeded when the shoe was on the other foot. Funny that!

I think it's a good thing, tbh if you were a single person or a one parent family you would struggle to live on that wage. You would not be able to raise a sufficient mortgage to buy a house.
So in many cases the benefit system tops up these wages so people can survive /pay rent/ support their children.
People always moan about cost to business etc but often that's just an excuse to keep their costs low, it's something that's always argued whenever anything is raised such as maternity leave, parental leave or even an extra one off bank holiday but in reality most businesses cope.
You need to pay people a living wage.

Hear hear, gosh all these threads prove is that misery loves company.

Welcome to MW employees having hours cut or being laid off if they can’t justify their new wage. Try upskilling so you have more to offer a business.

Work for an hour should pay enough not to require benefits, end of. I earn just a little over minimum wage and I know even that is insufficient if you don't have a second higher wage earner in the house!!

The same was said when NMW was introduced and with every increase since.

Some people want wages kept low, so they claim it'll destroy business. Every single increase, the same.

Thing is - whatever people on MW want to happen (business owners to make less money according to this thread), that’s not how economics works. If there is the demand for lower paid, lower skilled workers, they will be employed. If there are way to automate, contract out overseas, increase prices, then that’s what businesses will do. We absorb to a point, and then look at ways to mitigate - to ensure that our business remains viable.

As someone said upthread, if businesses can’t afford to pay increased wages, then they aren’t viable. Which means they will close if they can’t lay off staff, increase prices etc. If we suddenly weren’t viable, that would mean 12 people would lose their jobs. Now this won’t happen to us as we have room to increase prices, reduce hours etc but some businesses won’t have the ability to do that and will close, which is bad for all their employees.

You're not wrong. My dd's supervisor wage is only around 20p an hour more than brand new starters with zero experience that she has to train up, and she has to do all the admin, rotas, training, time sheets, reports, and basically anything her manager dumps on her because he doesn't want to have to do it himself. The difference between the supervisor wage and the trainee wage used to be worthwhile, but when NMW has gone up in the past, the supervisor wages have not increased by as much, so the gap has closed.

If your business plan relies on the tax payer subsidising your workers pay (through WTC) then there is something fundamentally wrong with your business plan, maybe you should rethink it?

So this is an interesting point. Presumably when she took the job she felt that she was getting the correct wage for her role, experience and responsibilities? None of that has changed - the only change is that the govt has decided to change lower wages. In theory it shouldn’t affect her own job, as she was already getting market rate for it.

However, it creates a situation where she (understandably) feels that her skills outweigh those on MW and she is therefore “worth” more.

This is when she should approach her boss with clear examples of why she is now also worth a pay rise to the business, how her skills have improved or increased, and if they agree, they will give her a pay rise.

That is just capitalism, non viable businesses must adapt or die and make room for new, viable ones. It's a personal tragedy for the business owner but they should have realised there was this risk when they started, it is the other side of the increased reward they presumably expected.

Presumably when she took the job she felt that she was getting the correct wage for her role, experience and responsibilities? None of that has changed

well inflation has changed so unless she was getting annual increases her wages will be going down.

Thinking this to a logical conclusion - if the govt decided that MW was now £20 an hour, obviously most businesses wouldn’t be able to pay that without significant price rises, but would employees suddenly be “worth” that much more, just because the govt decrees it?

And if skilled workers always want to be X amount above the MW, surely there is a point where most employees earn the MW because businesses simply can’t afford MW increases as well as non MW increases? I wonder what that figure actually is.

Exactly - that’s the point I’m making. If (for example) our business was simply not financially viable, we would lay off 12 staff, I would get a job instead. It would be more of a tragedy for my employees than for me as I am more qualified, so would have no difficulty finding work.