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Think tank: Centre for Cities
Author(s): Maxwell Read; Rob Johnson
May 13, 2026
This report from UK think tank Centre for Cities shows that rising National Living Wage rates are having very different effects across UK cities and towns.
A single national wage floor, combined with varying economic performance across UK cities, means that the impact of the minimum wage is felt very differently in different places.
A minimum wage at two-thirds of the national median means it ranges from 53 per cent of local median earnings in Reading, up to 82 per cent in Doncaster. In 2026, 45 out of the 62 biggest British cities and towns sit above the two-thirds target, compared to just three when the National Living Wage was announced in 2015. This has differing impacts for low earners across cities.
In Southend and Doncaster, almost one in three workers earn close to the minimum wage, compared to one in ten in Cambridge and Oxford. While higher-wage cities have largely managed to absorb a rising minimum wage, in other places it has compressed cities’ wage distributions from the bottom.
