Lowest Paying Jobs UK 2026

The detail

The UK National Living Wage (21+) is £12.71/hour from April 2026. At 40 hours/week × 52 weeks that's about £26,437 gross — functioning as a de-facto floor for most adult full-time roles, though a 37.5-hour week works out closer to £24,785.

Among the lowest full-time gross annual medians by ONS ASHE 2025 (Table 14, 4-digit SOC 2020) are: teaching assistants (£21,239); educational support assistants (£21,448); leisure and theme park attendants (£22,294); kitchen and catering assistants (£22,886); waiters and waitresses (£22,936); early education and childcare practitioners (£23,717); cleaners and domestics (£24,130); cooks (£24,228); hairdressers and barbers (£24,279); and sales and retail assistants (£25,056). The education-support roles report the lowest annual medians partly because many are term-time-only contracts, so their annual pay sits below a naive full-year National Living Wage salary even when the hourly rate is at or above the minimum.

Age tiers complicate the picture: the 18-to-20 minimum wage is £10.85/hour in 2026/27 (40h = about £22,568). Under-18s and apprentices get £8.00/hour. Many hospitality and retail employers use the age-banded rates to reduce wage bills.

Note that some roles once thought of as low-paid have moved up: security guards and related occupations now show a full-time median of £33,832 in ASHE 2025, well clear of the minimum-wage band. Bar staff (£23,182) are shown with a suppressed jobs-count in the 2025 provisional table, so treat that specific figure as less certain than the larger-sample roles above.