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PRIVACY
Economic Development

Pay boost for 18,000 Welsh workers as real living wage rises

The new Living Wage rates will rise to £10.90 an hour for workers in Wales and across the º£½ÇÊÓÆµ

The real Living Wage is different from the º£½ÇÊÓÆµ government's National Living Wage as it is calculated independently on what people need to live on(Image: PA)

More than 18,000 workers in Wales will see their pay packets rise from today as this year's real Living Wage rates are published.

The new Living Wage rates will rise to £10.90 an hour for workers in Wales and across the º£½ÇÊÓÆµ, and £11.95 for those in London.

For workers in Wales this means a 10.1% increase or extra £1 an hour - the largest year-on-year rise - and worth almost £3,000 more per year than the minimum wage.

Read more: Plans for over 100 energy efficient homes in North Wales unveiled

Around 18,600 workers at almost 500 Welsh businesses - including Redrow, Wales Millennium Centre and Burns Pet Foods - which are part of the Living Wage accreditation will benefit from the increase.

The real Living Wage is different from the º£½ÇÊÓÆµ government's National Living Wage (which is £9.50 for over 23s). Instead, the real Living Wage is an hourly rate of pay set independently and updated annually.

It is calculated based on what people need to live on according to the basic cost of living in the º£½ÇÊÓÆµ. Employers choose to pay the Living Wage on a voluntary basis. A full-time worker earning the new, real Living Wage would earn £2,730 a year more than a worker earning the current government minimum (NLW), and £1,950 more than their current pay.

Out of 4.8m workers paid less than the real Living Wage in the º£½ÇÊÓÆµ, around 263,000 are in Wales with 22% of all jobs in Wales paying below the real Living Wage.