The £13.21 minimum wage: how much of the rise reaches the pay packet

What the April 2027 minimum wage rise leaves in take-home

These rows are for workers aged 21 and over, whose legal minimum is called the National Living Wage. It is not the voluntary Living Wage some employers sign up to. Under-21s and apprentices are on lower rates, so these rows are not theirs: their rates and what they keep are further down.

Who gets nothing from this

The rate is a legal floor, so anyone already paid £13.21 an hour or more gets no rise from it unless their employer chooses to give one. Some people have no right to the minimum wage at all, including self-employed people running their own business, company directors, volunteers, members of the armed forces, and family members who live in the employer's home.

Where the £910 comes from

The Budget gives £910 as the gain for a full-time worker over 52 weeks, without saying what hours it means. A rise of 50p an hour for 52 weeks only reaches that figure at 35 hours. At 37.5 hours the rise before deductions is £975, and at 40 hours it is £1,040.

The 72% holds in every row because all of that pay is above £12,570 a year. That is the Personal Allowance, the amount someone on the standard tax code (1257L on a payslip) can earn before paying Income Tax, and National Insurance starts at the same level. Someone part-time whose pay stays below it, with steady hours, keeps all of the rise.

Why the new rate does not reach everyone on the same day

1 April 2027 is the date announced, but the new rate applies from the first pay period that starts on or after it. A pay period is the stretch of time a payment covers, not the day the money arrives. Someone whose pay month starts on the 1st moves across at once. Someone whose pay month starts on the 16th stays on the old rate until 15 April, so their first payslip at the new rate may not come until May.

The tax year starts a few days later, on 6 April, and that does not change these rows: the amounts they depend on are frozen for 2027/28.

The rates for under-21s and apprentices

Each of these lower rates rises by 3.9%:

• Aged 18 to 20: £10.85 to £11.27, a rise of 42p an hour.
• Aged 16 or 17: £8.00 to £8.31, a rise of 31p an hour.
• Apprentices under 19, or in the first year of an apprenticeship at any age: the same as ages 16 and 17.

What under-21s keep

The same rule applies as for adults: all of the rise while yearly pay stays under £12,570, and about 72% above it. The Scotland note further down covers the one exception.

An apprentice aged 19 or over who has finished the first year gets the rate for their age. Someone turning 21 moves to the adult rate at the start of the first pay period on or after their birthday.

The Low Pay Commission, which advises the government on these rates, recommended pausing the move towards paying the adult rate from age 18, because demand for young workers has slowed.

If pay is sacrificed into a pension

Salary sacrifice means agreeing to lower pay in the contract in return for something else, often a bigger pension contribution. The minimum wage is checked against the pay left after the sacrifice, and HMRC's guidance tells employers to cap sacrifices so that cash pay does not fall below it.

So this rise can catch someone paid more than the minimum. For a worker aged 21 or over, hourly pay after the sacrifice of £12.71 or more but under £13.21 is legal today, and too low under the new rate. The employer then has to raise pay or reduce the sacrifice. A smaller sacrifice means less going into the pension that way and more cash pay, and that cash is taxed and charged National Insurance.

Every sacrifice counts towards this, including cycle to work and childcare vouchers, and the check is the average across the pay period. A pension contribution simply deducted from pay is different, and does not normally lower minimum wage pay.

What else takes a share of the rise

The table leaves these out, and each changes what is kept:

• Universal Credit: For a worker who gets it, the payment is based on take-home pay and falls by 55p for each pound earned, once earnings pass any work allowance (an amount some households can earn first). At 35 hours, that leaves about a third of the £910 as extra money, once tax, National Insurance and the lost Universal Credit are counted.
• Workplace pension: For someone automatically enrolled, the legal minimum going in is 8% of earnings, usually leaving out the lowest slice of pay, with at least 3% from the employer and the worker normally paying the rest. Part of the rise therefore goes into the pension. Tax relief usually means the pay packet falls by less than the amount paid in.
• Student loan: Repayments start once pay passes a level set for each loan type, called the threshold. They are 9% of the pay above it, or 6% on a Postgraduate Loan, so someone already over their threshold loses that much of the rise as well, and someone who stays under it loses nothing. The Plan 1 threshold goes up on 6 April 2027 (Student Loans Company announcement, in the sources below), and pay in every row stays under it. This page gives that result for Plan 1 only, because that announcement states a figure. For other loan types it does not say which rows reach the threshold; GOV.UK's Repaying your student loan page, in the sources below, lists the current thresholds.
• State Pension age: Employees past it stop paying National Insurance, so they keep more than the table shows.
• Two jobs: These rows assume one. A person gets one Personal Allowance, usually on the job that pays most, so the rows do not fit a second job.
• Scotland: It sets its own Income Tax bands, and we found none for 2027/28 when this was written. On this year's, a lower starter rate runs up to £16,537 and 20% follows it. Pay in every row is past the starter rate, so all of the rise is taxed at 20% and the extra take-home is the same as shown, even though total take-home is slightly higher. Someone on lower pay, which can include an under-18, is still on the starter rate and keeps a little more of the rise.

Is it law yet?

The government has accepted the Low Pay Commission's recommendations in full, but the rates become law only through regulations approved by both Houses of Parliament. This year's were made on 19 March 2026, days before they started. On 31 October 2026 we found no draft for the April 2027 rates on legislation.gov.uk.

What these figures rest on

This post concerns the whole of the UK. The table uses 2026/27 rates. The new rate starts on 1 April 2027, 5 days before the 2027/28 tax year. A full year at it is assumed, at 52 weeks of the hours in each row. Take-home at that rate is worked on 2026/27 rules, because the Personal Allowance, the Income Tax bands, and the National Insurance primary threshold and upper earnings limit are frozen for 2027/28 in Budget 2026's rates annex. The rate is announced and the calculators on this site keep today's until it starts. It assumes one job, no pension, no student loan and the standard National Insurance category. Income Tax is worked on the rates for England, Wales and Northern Ireland and a 1257L tax code. Scottish take-home differs. Figures are rounded to the nearest pound.

It is an estimate, not a statement of what your payslip will show, and it is not financial advice.