Low pay in London boroughs

This page looks at jobs paid below London Living Wage across London boroughs. Here we use data restricted to jobs held by people who live in London (residence-based), and their job may be based outside of London. For jobs located in boroughs, please see 'Low-paid jobs in London', chart four.

Most boroughs follow the same trend for London as a whole, with significant increases in low-paid jobs held by residents in most London boroughs between 2012 and 2020, and reductions in 2021 and 2022 (partly reflecting the distorting effects of the pandemic and furlough in London labour markets).

Brent was the borough in 2022 that saw the highest proportion of residents’ jobs being paid less than the London Living Wage with 23.6% followed by Newham at 21.2%. By contrast, Wandsworth and Hammersmith and Fulham were the only boroughs with less than 10% of resident’s jobs classified as low paid with 9.7% and 9.9% respectively.

The largest increases in London residents suffering from low pay in the last decade were in Kingston upon Thames, Merton and Sutton.

The proportion of low-paid jobs held by women is higher than that of men in all the London boroughs.

There are important geographical differences however, while women resident in boroughs like Havering and Bromley have low pay rates that are twice as high as their male neighbours. In places like Newham or Southwark, this gap is smaller than 2 percentage points.

The proportion of full-time jobs held by residents that are low-paid is below 20% for most boroughs, whereas for full-time jobs this proportion ranges from above 55% to below 25%.

The proportion of part-time jobs held by residents that are low paid is more than 4 times higher than that of full-time jobs in several boroughs, such as Newham or Kingston upon Thames.