National Living Wage in UK – The biggest year-on-year increase since 2001

“Britain deserves a pay rise,” George Osborne declared last year. And what a pay rise.

The British chancellor announced a “National Living Wage,” where those aged 25 and over will see their minimum pay jump from £6.70 ($9.63) to £7.20 ($10.30) an hour. The increase—the biggest year-on-year increase since 2001—comes into force today (April 1).The government claims over a million workers will directly benefit from the “largest annual increase in a minimum wage rate across any G7 country since 2009 in cash and real terms.” And the UK’s Low Pay Commission (pdf), the organization tasked with advising the government about the national minimum wage, says this is the “biggest change” since its introduction in 1999.

The inflation-adjusted minimum wage has gradually been increasing in the last five years, with the latest increase giving the UK a boost in annual minimum wage compared to its OECD counterparts.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at In a grand social experiment, Britain adopts a “National Living Wage” – Quartz