Minimum Wage: Recruitment

(asked on 22nd March 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department takes to ensure that job advertisements live on its website are compliant with National Minimum Wage legislation; and if she will make a statement.


Answered by
Mims Davies Portrait
Mims Davies
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 28th March 2022

All adverts listed on Find a job meet the National Minimum Wage, with the exception of a small number resulting from user error on the part of the employer.

When entering details of their job advert into Find a job the employer is presented with 2 options for stating the wages/salary. They can provide a minimum and maximum rate of pay and select the period this applies to, for example hourly, weekly or annually. Alternatively, they can confirm that the job will pay at least the National Minimum Wage.

The employer is also required to state whether the job is full time (30 hours per week or more) or part time (less than 30 hours per week). When full time is selected Find a job validates that the wages/salary on offer meets National Minimum Wage. The advert cannot be posted until this condition is met.

When part time is selected the validation ensures that the hourly rates entered meet or exceed National Minimum Wage and highlights to the employer where this is not the case; the employer cannot proceed with the advert until this condition is met. However, we know that on a small number of occasions the employer then goes on to mistakenly select the incorrect period this wage applies to. This can lead to adverts showing wages of, for example, £8.91 per year when clearly it should be per hour. Additional manual checks are performed to identify and remove such adverts.

Additionally, if a user finds any error with a job advert – with the rate of pay or anything else - they can use the ‘report this job’ feature and the DWP team will investigate and if appropriate remove the advert.

There is no separate process in place for reporting employers to HMRC’s Minimum Wage Complaint Unit.

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