London Living Wage (2024)

FAQs

London Living Wage? ›

What is the London Living Wage? The London Living Wage is an hourly rate of pay, currently set at £13.15. It is calculated independently to reflect the high cost of living in the capital, giving a worker in London and their family enough to afford the essentials and to save.

The UK Real Living Wage rate is £11.95. Due to higher living costs, the London Living Wage rate, which is also voluntary, is higher, at £13.15. There's a significant difference between the real Living Wage rate and the government's national living wage of £10.42 per hour (for workers over the age of 22).

Today (April 1st 2024) the Government's National Living Wage, the legal minimum for workers over 21 and over, increases to £11.44.

The calculation

The UK Living Wage for outside of London is currently £12.00 per hour. The London Living Wage is currently £13.15 per hour. This covers all boroughs in Greater London.

There is a UK rate and a London rate. It's not the same as the National Living Wage. The UK Living Wage is £12.00 an hour, and the London Living Wage is £13.15 an hour for 2024/25. The Living Wage is based on the cost of living.

Earning a 75k salary in the UK is generally considered a good income that provides the means to cover living costs, including housing, utilities, transportation, and leisure activities.

With a salary of £60,000, you can afford a decent standard of living and have some room for leisure activities and occasional trips. Living in zones 1-2 of London can be pretty expensive, especially regarding housing. Sharing a flat with one person in a nice area could cost around £1,100-£1,200 per month.

The average annual salary for Londoners is £44,370 across all age groups, according to the latest data available for 2023 from the ONS.

UK National Minimum & Living Wage rates

Around 200,000 workers in Scotland are benefitting from the UK Government's increases to the National Living Wage and the National Minimum Wage. From 1st April 2024 the National Living Wage has now increased to £11.44 per hour.

According to research from MIT, the living wage in the United States was $25.02 per hour ($104,077.70 per year) before taxes per year in 2022 for a family of four (two working adults with two children). That's an increase from $24.16 ($100,498.60 per year) in 2021.

What salary is needed to live comfortably in UK? ›

In 2023, we have calculated that a single person needs to earn £29,500 to have an acceptable standard of living, up from £25,000 in 2022. A couple with two children need to earn £50,000, compared to £44,500 in 2022.

The voluntarily paid living wage in the United Kingdom for 2023/24 is twelve British pounds per hour, with this rising to 13.15 pounds per hour for workers in London.

The latest government data (published May 2024) reveals that the mean average UK weekly wage (including bonuses) across all industry sectors (in England and Wales) is £682 gross (that's the equivalent to an annual pre-tax salary of £35,464.

However, organisations must choose to pay their employees the London Living Wage - higher than what they're required to pay by law. This is why the Mayor is championing the benefits of the Living Wage - to the lives of Londoners and to your business - and encouraging employers to opt in.

It's a salary of around £48,000 assuming you are working full time. That's a very healthy salary in the UK, certainly above average.

The median annual earnings in the United Kingdom was 34,963 British pounds per year in 2023. Annual earnings varied significantly by region, ranging from 44,370 pounds in London to 31,200 pounds in the North East.

London weighting is an allowance paid to certain civil servants, teachers, airline employees, PhD students, police and security officers in and around London, the capital of England. It is designed to help these workers with the cost of living in Greater London, which is higher than that of the rest of the UK.

In 2023, we have calculated that a single person needs to earn £29,500 to have an acceptable standard of living, up from £25,000 in 2022. A couple with two children need to earn £50,000, compared to £44,500 in 2022.

41% of Londoners have an annual household income of less than £20,000 (excluding those aged 5 or below).