Nearly 5 mln Britons earn below living wage: survey

September 5, 2013 Leave a comment

Nearly 5 mln Britons earn below living wage: survey

(Xinhua)    20:30, September 04, 2013

Britain now has 4.8 million people, which represents 20 percent of the total employees inBritain, earning below the living wage, a surge from 3.4 million in 2009, according to asurvey released by think tank Resolution Foundation on Wednesday. The Low Pay Britain 2013 report said the economic downturn pushed a further 1.4 millionemployees below the living wage, a basic standard necessary for living, calculated at 7.20pounds (11.25 U.S. dollars) an hour outside London and 8.30 pounds in London in April2012.The benchmark wage has now increased to 7.45 pounds outside London and 8.55 pounds inLondon.
The report also claimed that 2.9 million female employees, 25 percent of the total, earnedless than the living wage in 2012. Meanwhile, 15 percent male employees (1.9 million) fellinto the same bracket.
Some 77 percent of young people aged 20 and under earn below the living wage.
Low pay was most common in the hotels and restaurants sector, where two out of threeemployees were payed below minimum wage, and least common in public administrationand defense.
The number of low-paid younger employees, aged between 16 and 30, has climbed steadilyfrom 26 percent to 37 percent in 2012.
The report suggests the shift may be due to the growth in student employment amongyounger people and a general increase in older employment, with those continuing to workbeyond 60 being higher-skilled and higher-paid than in the past. (1 pound =1.56 U.S.dollars)

Filed under Macro Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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