National Minimum Wage Expected To Be Increased This Week

The national minimum wage could be raised when the Budget is announced later this week.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak is reportedly drawing up plans to increase the minimum wage to £10 an hour by the next General Election.

And, he'll kick off those plans by announcing an increase on the current rate of £8.91 on Wednesday when the Budget is revealed, the Mirror reports.

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Some experts have said the Sunak could raise the minimum wage by as much as £9.50 - with it as high as £10.50 by the time the next General Election takes place in May 2024.

Currently, British workers are entitled to £8.91 an hour if they're 23 or over, while those aged 21-22 earn £8.36. It drops to £6.56 to 18-20 year olds and £4.62 for under 18s.

Alongside the predicted boost to minimum wage, Sunak is also expected to allocate £560 million into training adults to improve their maths skills to help them find employment.

Jane Gratton of the British Chambers of Commerce said: "More needs to be done to close the skills gap and improving numeracy sits at the very heart of that."

Speaking at the Conservative Party conference earlier this year, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: "We are not going back to the same old broken model with low wages, low growth, low skills and low productivity."

He also urged businesses to raise their wages on offer to employees.

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Johnson went on: "That is the direction in which this country is going - towards a high-wage, high-skill, high-productivity economy that the people of this country need and deserve."

Deputy PM Dominic Raab mirrored Johnson's words, telling BBC Radio 4: "Our vision for the economy as we bounce back from this terrible pandemic, employment rising, youth unemployment going down, is also to make sure that wages are rising.

"Now, real wages are rising on the latest quarterly figures, but we need to support that and we can't go back in the long term to being reliant on the addiction, if you like, of cheap, unskilled labour from abroad.'

He added: "It's absolutely true that if we're, over a long period of time, overly reliant on cheap, unskilled labour from abroad, we're ducking some of the big productivity issues that we've got to address."

Topics: UK News, Politics

Claire Reid

Claire is a journalist at LADbible who, after dossing around for a few years, went to Liverpool John Moores University. She graduated with a degree in Journalism and a whole load of debt. When not writing words in exchange for money she is usually at home watching serial killer documentaries surrounded by cats. You can contact Claire at [email protected]

@ClaireReid19