GovWire

At the Low Pay Commission, we analyse the low-paid labour market to monitor the impact of the National Minimum Wage. To this end, we want to identify the businesses and workers who are most affected by the minimum wage.

To help us identify these workers and businesses, we use two definitions: low-paying occupations relate to job roles that are often low-paid for example, sales assistants; low-paying industries are based on the main activity of the employer for example, retail trade.

The definitions were last updated in 2017, shortly after the introduction of the National Living Wage (NLW). A lot has changed since then: the level of the minimum wage has increased rapidly, potentially changing the types of workers and businesses affected by it. The ONS has also updated how it classifies occupations, moving to a new set of standard occupational codes (SOC 2020) in the datasets we use. This move was completed for the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) our main data source for hourly pay in autumn 2022.

To make sure our work keeps up with these changes and remains relevant once the NLW meets its target in 2024 we have reviewed and updated our definitions of low-paying occupations and industries. This page publishes tables with full details of the new occupation and industry groups. It also contains data tables related to a blog we have recently published explaining these changes.