Single people must earn at least £30,500 per year to live well in the UK

Millions of Brits don’t earn enough money to “live with dignity”, new research has found – even when they’re working full time.

After 15 months of Labour government, academics from Loughborough University’s Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP) have determined a new set of ‘real’ minimum income standards (MIS).

A single person now needs to earn £30,500 a year to “participate in society”, they found.

A working-age couple without children needs £43,000 (£21,500 each)to have enough disposable income to reach MIS. A couple with two children, aged three and seven, needs £74,000 a year between them.

Single pensioners need £17,400 per year if they are receiving pension credit, rising to £19,000 if their income was from the full state pension and they were not receiving the winter fuel payment.

A pensioner couple on pension credit need £29,000 a year, while those receiving only the state pension need £29,200.

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But millions of Brits fall short of this standard. The Low Pay Commission estimated that there were around 1.9 million workers paid at or below the minimum wage in 2024. That’s around 6.5% of all UK workers earning £23,875 or less per year.

It should make sobering reading for Labour, said Dr Juliet Stone, lead author and research fellow at CRSP.

“It is clear that many people on low-to-middle incomes are still struggling to reach a minimum standard of living,” she warned.

“Bold policy decisions are needed if Labour are to deliver on their ambitions to make sure incomes are sufficient to meet the rising cost of living.”

Which groups in the UK fail to meet the minimum standard to ‘live with dignity’?

There are lots of different ways to tally an acceptable living standard. The government describes its minimum wage as a “fair wage for the lowest-paid workers”.

This is contested by organisations like the Living Wage Foundation. Their higher rate – set at approximately £24,570 annually and £27,007 annually in London – is voluntarily paid by more than 16,000 UK businesses.

Both wages fall short of the ‘minimum income standard’, according to the MIS report out on Tuesday (9 September). With food price inflation high, people are still struggling to make ends meet more than a year after the new government promised “change”.

“Little has changed in the past year, with income from work and from benefits falling short of providing what people need to live with dignity,” the report authors conclude.

Their analysis produced minimum budgets based on the needs of different households, covering food, clothes and shelter, as well as other outgoings required for a ‘dignified’ life. That includes things like the occasional hobby-related cost, toiletries and one week-long budget UK holiday per year.

The shortfall is stark. A single working-age adult working full-time on the national living wage (NLW) reaches just 76% of MIS, leaving them nearly £7,000 a year short.

A lone parent with two children fares worst, reaching 69% of MIS even when working full-time. To make ends meet they would need £61,000 a year, far above the NLW.

A couple with two children where one parent works full-time on the NLW and the other is not working, reaches just 66% of MIS. Even with both parents working full-time, they cover only 82% of the minimum.

The only household type included in the analysis whose income is sufficient to reach MIS are working-age couples without children, if both are in full-time work on the NLW. Pensioners fare second best: single pensioners on Pension Credit reach about 95% of MIS, and couples about 91%.

Households reliant on out-of-work benefits fall furthest below. Lone parents without work have just 44% of the income required for MIS, while couple parents have only 37%.

But bleak as it is, the MIS research does not paint the full picture. It does not include the additional costs faced by disabled people, since its calculations assume households are in relatively good health. This means that disability-related expenses – such as higher energy use, specialist equipment, or extra transport – are not factored into the budgets.

The disability equality charity Scope estimate that disabled people have an extra £1,095 a month in outgoings.

What does this mean for Labour?

Raising living standards was one of Labour’s headline pledges when it came to power in July 2024.

Yet the minimum income standards show no meaningful improvement: the proportion of household budgets covered by benefits and the minimum wage has barely shifted since last year.

Indeed, in-work poverty is rising. Households where at least one person is in work now make up the majority of those below MIS. In 2008/09, a little more than half of working-age households below MIS had someone in work; by 2022/23, that figure had risen to nearly 68%.

Full-time work does not guarantee a life lived with dignity, said professor Matt Padley, co-author and co-director of the CRSP – and this presents a serious issue for the government.

“If the government is serious about raising living standards, it needs to do much more to boost incomes and tackle rising costs.

“Without this, we’re going to see more and more people going without what the public agrees everyone needs to live in dignity. This is just not acceptable in 2025 and we need to see real action, not just words, from government.”

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