Wages of hospitality workers exceed new NLW thresholds, study says
The QSR sector has the highest hourly wage that has seen a 4.7% growth from March to September this year.
The wages of hospitality workers over 25 years of age across the restaurant, QSR and pub sectors is revealed to be at an average of £8.60, 39p more than the new required minimum wage by the National Living Wage (NLW) that will be implemented on April 2019.
According to a study by leisure and hospitality software provider Fourth, the average pay of those aged from 21 to 24 is at £8.35 as compared to the new threshold’s £7.70. Those aged from 18 to 20 gets £7.37, £1.22 higher than the new NLW standards of £6.15.
Workers under 18 years of age are paid an average of £6.52, which is £2.32 than the new threshold of £4.35.
“These statistics clearly reveal that hourly pay in the hospitality industry is currently significantly outstripping increases to the National Living Wage. Considering hourly wages of hospitality workers increased by 4.8% over the last six months, it’s likely the gap between real wages and the new thresholds will be further exacerbated between now and April,” Mike Shipley, analytics & insight solutions director at Fourth, said.
“Attracting and retaining quality employees is one of the biggest challenges hospitality operators now face and with a well-documented shortage of labour, particularly in skilled back-of-house roles, operators are offering competitive rates, alongside development programmes, incentives and other initiatives to attract the best employees, which are all driving up costs."
They also mentioned that QSR employees receive the highest hourly wage as it rose from 4.7% in March to £9.08 in September. The wages of pub workers have also experienced an increase of 5.6% from £7.98 to £8.43 during the same period.
“[T]he large numbers of EU and rest of the world (ROW) workers in skilled back of house chef roles in the quick service and restaurant industries has significantly driven up their average wage per hour, particularly with the ROW where a number of specialist overseas chefs command higher wages, impacting the figures,” Shipley added.
