Hospitality and service provision

Making London a Living Wage City

With the Living Wage Foundation, we are working to make London a Living Wage City. This multi-year campaign will see us work to put £635m of wages back into the pockets of low-paid workers in London.

As part of this campaign, we are focusing on sectors where low pay is the most rampant, and where employers paying the real Living Wage can have the most impact in London. Two of these sectors are hospitality and service provision.

70.4% of hospitality roles in London pay less than the real Living Wage, despite counting for over 10% of the capital’s employment. Almost a fifth of all hospitality employment across the UK occurs in London.

We see the problem of low pay even more in the accommodation sector; the average hourly rate for employees in the accommodation sector is £4 less than the average employee across the broader economy.

In the accommodation sector, low pay mainly affects younger workers and women with little scope for pay progression. The highest earning age group (40 – 50yrs) still earn £54 less per week than the average 22 – 29yr employee across the broader economy. Simultaneously, excessive executive pay still exists across the sector.

Many service providers also work at night or at unsociable hours, where the problem of low pay is more widespread; while only 12% of all workers in the UK regularly work nights, 20% of workers who are in low-paid and insecure work regularly work nights.

Action strand for hospitality and service provision

As part of the 'Making London a Living Wage City' campaign, we are supporting cross-sector coalitions to tackle low pay in London. These coalitions are made up of business leaders, workers, and key civil society groups who are coming together to make change.