Rural England
Low pay
Key points
- Low pay is more prevalent in the most rural districts: 25% of employees compared to around 22% in other types of district.
- 1.7 million employees in rural districts are paid less than £7 per hour. This is two-fifths of all those paid less than £7 per hour.
- The geographic pattern for low pay is very different that that lacking work. See the indicator on lacking, but wanting, paid work.
- See the UK indicators on trends in low pay and the location of low pay.
Graph 1: Compared to urban
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Rural/urban ratios (urban = 10)
On most poverty and social exclusion indicators, rural areas have 'better scores' than urban areas. The purpose of the table below is to differentiate between those subjects where rural areas are 'a bit better' and those where rural areas are 'a lot better'. It does so by presenting the rural statistics for the indicator as a proportion of the urban statistics. So, for example, a rural 'score' of 6 in the table below means that the rural statistic is around 60% of its urban equivalent.
| 'Very rural' districts | 11 |
|---|---|
| 'Mostly rural' districts | 10 |
| 'Part rural' districts | 10 |
Definitions and data sources
The indicator
For each type of local authority district, the graph shows the proportion of employees paid less than £7 per hour in 2007. £7 per hour is roughly two-thirds of the Great Britain median hourly earnings and is commonly used as a threshold when analysing low pay.
The second graph shows the distribution of employees paid less than £7 per hour by type of district.
Level of the data
Lower tier local authorities (districts), as classified by the DEFRA 2005 classification system. Both the DEFRA classification rules and their results by local authority can be found on the page on rural/urban classification systems.
Source
Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings.
The numbers
| Type of district | Rate | Numbers |
|---|---|---|
| 'Very rural' districts | 25% | 600,000 |
| 'Mostly rural' districts | 23% | 500,000 |
| 'Part rural' districts | 22% | 600,000 |
| Urban authorities | 22% | 2,800,000 |