Low pay by industry

The proportion of employees in each industry who are paid below the LLW and the share of low-paid employees that this represents. 

Some sectors have a much higher proportion of low-paid jobs than others. The proportion of employees who are low paid is extremely high in the hospitality sector (hotels and restaurants) at 64%. The industry with the second highest proportion of low paid workers is retail and wholesale at 41%. Transportation and storage and private sector services* have the lowest proportion of employees who are low paid, at 4% and 10%. Some private sector service jobs are well paid such as financial and insurance activities and professional, scientific and technical activities, while some are generally less well paid, such as administrative and support work. 

Overall there are a large number of jobs in retail and wholesale, so low-paid jobs in this sector make up the largest number of low-paid jobs overall at 26%, equivalent to 180,000 low-paid jobs. Private sector services is a very large sector overall (37% of jobs), meaning that although low-paid jobs in this sector are a small proportion of the total, it still accounts for 22% or 150,000 of all low-paid jobs. There are a similar number of low-paid jobs in hotels and restaurants (150,000). The public sector and community services sector also accounts for a large number of jobs (30%) and so despite the fact that a low proportion of them are low paid this accounts for 130,000 or 19% of all low-paid jobs. 

* Private sector services includes: information and communication, financial and insurance activities, real estate activities, professional, scientific and technical activities and administrative and support service activities.