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Minimum wage in Glasgow Scotland: the legal rate and what local jobs pay

The legal rate is the same as anywhere in the UK. What isn't the same is Glasgow's rent, its council tax and what the jobs around you pay.

By Graeme · Published 29 October 2026 · 6 min read

Last updated · Figures checked

Quick answer · Minimum wage in Glasgow, 21 and over

£12.71an hour

The same legal rate as the rest of the UK, rising to £13.21 on 1 April 2027. Full time, that's about £1,784 a month take home.

Age 21 and over
£12.71, then £13.21
Age 18 to 20
£10.85, then £11.27
One bedroom rent, Greater Glasgow
£845 a month
Left after rent and council tax
£808 a month

Rates from 1 April 2026. Rent for September 2026Source GOV.UK

Glasgow tenement street and an ordinary worker's lunch bag
Glasgow tenement street and an ordinary worker's lunch bag.
On this page

The minimum wage in Glasgow is £12.71 an hour if you're 21 or over. It's exactly the same as in Edinburgh, Inverness or London, because the UK Government sets one rate for the whole country. What changes in Glasgow is how far that money goes, and what other jobs in the city pay.

The legal rate in Glasgow

There's no Glasgow rate and no Scottish rate. Every employer in the city has to pay at least the figure for your age, whether it's a shop on Buchanan Street or a care agency in the East End. The rates go up again on 1 April 2027.

The same in Glasgow as anywhere in the UK

Minimum wage rates

AgeNowFrom 1 April 2027
21 and over£12.71£13.21
18 to 20£10.85£11.27
Under 18£8.00£8.31
Apprentice£8.00£8.31
Hourly rates from GOV.UK. The apprentice rate is for apprentices under 19, or 19 and over in their first year.

What a full time minimum wage job pays

Working £12.71 an hour for 37.5 hours a week comes to £1,784 a month in your bank once Scottish income tax and are off. That figure is the same anywhere in Scotland. Here's the full working, this year and next.

Age 21 and over, 37.5 hours a week

Full time pay at the legal minimum

Now (£12.71)April 2027 (£13.21)
Pay before tax, a week£476.63£495.38
Pay before tax, a year£24,784.50£25,759.50
Take home, a year£21,404.11£22,106.11
Take home, a month£1,783.68£1,842.18
Scottish income tax and employee National Insurance on 2026/27 rules, standard tax code, no pension or student loan. The 2027/28 Scottish tax bands aren't set yet.

What Glasgow jobs actually pay

Glasgow has 429,000 employee jobs, the most of any Scottish council, according to the earnings survey for April 2026. Very few of them sit right on the legal minimum. This is what the hourly rate looks like across all of them, full and part time, leaving out overtime.

£13.32

an hour: 1 in 10 Glasgow jobs pays less than this

1 in 5 pays less than £14.37. The middle Glasgow job pays £20.61 an hour, against £19.63 across Scotland.

There's an odd split in the city's pay. Full time jobs based in Glasgow pay £42,573 a year in the middle, above the Scotland figure. But full time workers who actually live in Glasgow earn £39,817, below it. People living in East Renfrewshire earn £49,073 and in East Dunbartonshire £46,797. That suggests plenty of the city's better paid jobs go to people who live in the suburbs round it. I've gone into why that matters in why poverty is worse in Glasgow.

What's left after rent and council tax in Glasgow

Rent is where Glasgow bites. The average one bedroom home in the Greater Glasgow rental area cost £845 a month in September 2026, up 3.0% on a year. On a full time minimum wage that's 47% of take home pay gone before anything else.

Add a Band A council tax bill, the lowest band, with water and waste water on top, and that's another £131 a month. Glasgow put council tax up 5.9% this year. The other bands are on the Glasgow council tax bands page.

Full time on the legal minimum, a month

What's left after rent and council tax

CityTake homeOne bedroom rentCouncil tax and waterLeft
Glasgow£1,784£845£131£808
Edinburgh£1,784£1,036£127£621
Aberdeen£1,784£602£133£1,048
Dundee£1,784£573£132£1,078
Take home at £12.71 an hour, 37.5 hours a week. Rent is the ONS average for a one bedroom home in the city's rental area, September 2026. Council tax is Band A for 2026/27 with water and waste water, before any discount.

So a single person on the legal minimum in Glasgow has about £808 a month for food, energy, travel and everything else. That's more than in Edinburgh, but a good bit less than in Aberdeen or Dundee, on exactly the same wage.

Live on your own?

You get 25% off the council tax part of the bill. If your income is low you may also get on top, so it's worth checking with Glasgow City Council.

The real Living Wage gap in Glasgow

The is a voluntary rate that employers sign up to, worked out from what a basic life costs. It's £14.10 an hour, the same in Glasgow as anywhere outside London. Against the legal minimum that's £1.39 an hour, or £2,710.50 a year at full time hours. In a city where rent takes nearly half of take home pay, that gap matters. More in real Living Wage Scotland.

If you're paid less than the minimum wage

Check your payslip against your paid hours, not the length of your shift. If it's short, speak to your employer first. If that goes nowhere, Acas gives free, confidential advice on 0300 123 1100, Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. You can also complain to HMRC, which can make an employer pay back what you're owed.

Glasgow's council tax, band by band

See what every band costs in Glasgow this year, water included, and how much it went up.

Glasgow council tax bands

Quick answers

Questions people ask

Is the minimum wage different in Glasgow?

No. The UK Government sets one minimum wage for the whole UK. In Glasgow it's £12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over, the same as Edinburgh or London.

How much is the minimum wage a month in Glasgow?

Working 37.5 hours a week at £12.71 takes home about £1,784 a month after Scottish income tax and . That's the same anywhere in Scotland.

What do jobs in Glasgow pay?

In April 2026, 1 in 10 jobs based in Glasgow paid less than £13.32 an hour and the middle job paid £20.61. The middle full time job paid £42,573 a year.

What will the minimum wage be in Glasgow in 2027?

£13.21 an hour from 1 April 2027 for workers aged 21 and over, the same as the rest of the UK.
Proof and further detailOpen the 13 original sources
  1. 01National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates , UK Government. The legal hourly minimums from 1 April 2026: £12.71 for workers aged 21 and over, £10.85 for ages 18 to 20, and £8 for under 18s and eligible apprentices.How I used it: The full time illustration is £12.71 multiplied by 37.5 paid hours and 52 weeks: £24,784.50 gross a year. It is an illustration, not a claim that every minimum wage worker receives those hours.
  2. 02National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates from April 2027 , UK Government. The legal hourly minimums from 1 April 2027: £13.21 for workers aged 21 and over, £11.27 for ages 18 to 20, and £8.31 for under 18s and eligible apprentices.How I used it: The full time illustration is £13.21 multiplied by 37.5 paid hours and 52 weeks: £25,759.50 gross a year, £975 more than the same hours at the 2026 rate.
  3. 03Scottish Income Tax: rates and bands, 2026 to 2027 , Scottish Government. The bands used to work out take home pay: a £12,570 personal allowance, then 19% to £16,537, 20% to £29,526 and 21% to £43,662.
  4. 04National Insurance rates and categories , UK Government. Class 1 employee National Insurance, category A: nothing below £242 a week, 8% between £242 and £967, and 2% above.
  5. 05Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2026 provisional: place of work by local authority (ASHE Table 7) , Office for National Statistics. For jobs based in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee and Scotland in April 2026: the number of employee jobs, hourly pay leaving out overtime at the 10th and 20th percentiles and the median for all employees, and median annual and weekly pay for full time employees.How I used it: Tables 7.1a, 7.6a and 7.7a. Workplace figures count a job where the work is, so they include people who commute in. They are compared with residence figures only to show that difference.
  6. 06Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2026 provisional: place of residence by local authority (ASHE Table 8) , Office for National Statistics. Median gross annual and weekly pay for full time employees living in Scotland and in each of the 32 councils in April 2026: £41,591 a year and £825.40 a week for Scotland. Also the Scotland mean (£48,435), the 10th to 90th percentiles, hourly pay leaving out overtime (£21.59), the median for all employees (£34,559) and the UK median (£40,911).How I used it: Tables 8.1a, 8.5a to 8.7a and their quality tables. Annual figures are rounded to the nearest pound. Annual pay only covers employees who had been in the same job for at least a year. Council figures with a coefficient of variation above 10% are starred, because ONS advises caution. Orkney's annual median is not published.
  7. 07Price Index of Private Rents, UK: monthly price statistics, 21 October 2026 , Office for National Statistics. Average monthly private rents for September 2026, for one bedroom homes and all homes, with the change on a year: Greater Glasgow £845 one bedroom, Lothian £1,036, Aberdeen and Shire £602, Dundee and Angus £573, and Scotland £702.How I used it: Scotland is published by Broad Rental Market Area, not by council, so each city uses the area it sits in. ONS notes Scottish rents are mostly advertised new lets. The money left each month is full time take home pay at the legal minimum, less the one bedroom average and a 2026/27 Band A council tax and water bill divided by 12, before any discount.
  8. 08Council Tax by band 2025-26 and 2026-27, council tax datasets , Scottish Government. Council tax by band for all 32 Scottish councils in 2025-26 and 2026-27, including the cash and percentage change between the two years.How I used it: The amounts are used as displayed to the nearest penny in the two national workbooks, which record the figures reported by each local authority. Cash and percentage changes are calculated from those two published amounts. Scottish Water charges are excluded from every council tax comparison and added separately from Scottish Water's published table.
  9. 09Unmetered charges 2026-27 , Scottish Water. Unmetered water and waste water charges for 2026-27: £201.30 and £233.58 at Band A, £434.88 combined. These are collected with council tax.
  10. 10Council Tax discounts, exemptions and reductions , mygov.scot. The single adult, student, disability, severe mental impairment and low income routes that can reduce or remove a Council Tax bill.
  11. 11Real Living Wage rates and frequently asked questions , Living Wage Foundation. The voluntary real Living Wage of £14.10 an hour outside London and £15.45 in London, announced on 15 October 2026 for accredited employers to pay by 1 May 2027. It is calculated from living costs rather than set as the legal wage floor.How I used it: At 37.5 paid hours for 52 weeks this is £27,495 gross a year, £2,710.50 more than the same hours illustration at the 2026 legal minimum.
  12. 12Pay and work rights helpline and complaints , UK Government. The Acas helpline, 0300 123 1100, Monday to Friday 8am to 6pm, and that complaints about the minimum wage go to HMRC.
  13. 13The National Minimum Wage and Living Wage: employers and the minimum wage , UK Government. That HMRC can check an employer at any time and investigate a complaint, that arrears must be paid back straight away, and that an employer who underpays also faces a fine.

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