United Kingdom
Low pay by ethnicity
Key points
- Half of Bangladeshi and Pakistani employees earn less than £7 per hour. This is a much higher proportion than that for any other ethnic group.
- Taking this indicator and the indicator on work and ethnicity together, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis have both the lowest work rates and, once in work, the highest likelihood of low pay.
Graph 1: By group
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Why this indicator was originally chosen
For some ethnic groups, low pay is a matter of particular concern.
Definitions and data sources
The graph shows the proportion of working-age employees in each ethnic group who are paid less than £7.60 per hour.
The data source is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and relates to the United Kingdom. To improve its statistical reliability, the data is the average for the latest three years. People whose hourly pay rates cannot be calculated from the survey data have been excluded from the analysis.
The division between different ethnic minority groups is driven by the data. For sample size reasons, people from a mixed ethnic background are excluded from the analysis.
Overall adequacy of the indicator: limited. The LFS is a well-established, quarterly government survey, designed to be representative of the population as a whole, but those classified as being of ethnic minority groups together a variety of disparate groups. Furthermore, there are some doubts about the reliability of its low pay data and the sample sizes for some of the ethnic groups are very small.
External links
- See the 2007 Joseph Rowntree Foundation report entitled Poverty among ethnic groups: how and why does it differ?.
- See the 2007 Joseph Rowntree Foundation reports Poverty and ethnicity in the UK, Ethnic minorities in the labour market: dynamics and diversity and The role of higher education in providing opportunities for south asian women.
- For a discussion of the relationship between low pay and income poverty, see the 2006 report by the New Policy Institute and the Bevan Foundation entitled Dreaming of £250 a week: a scoping study of in-work poverty in Wales and the 2004 Joseph Rowntree Foundation report entitled Low pay, household resources and poverty.
- See the Low Pay Commission site and their annual reports on the National Minimum Wage.
Relevant 2007 Public Service Agreements
None directly relevant.
Relevant government policies
The numbers
Graph 1
| Bangladeshi | 51% |
|---|---|
| Black - African | 32% |
| Black - Caribbean | 23% |
| Indian | 28% |
| Pakistani | 46% |
| White - British | 28% |
| White - other | 32% |