Take-home pay on the National Living Wage

From 1 April 2026 the National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over. Working 37.5 hours a week for 52 weeks, that is £24,784.50 a year gross. With a tax code of 1257L and no pension or student loan, take-home pay is £21,364.44 a year, about £1,780 a month or £411 a week. A 5 per cent auto-enrolment pension contribution brings that down to about £20,623.

The full-time calculation

Item	Annual	Monthly	Weekly
Gross pay (37.5 hours × £12.71)	£24,784.50	£2,065.38	£476.63
Income Tax	£2,442.90	£203.58	£46.98
National Insurance	£977.16	£81.43	£18.79
Take-home pay	£21,364.44	£1,780.37	£410.85

Income Tax is 20 per cent of everything above the £12,570 personal allowance, so 20 per cent of £12,214.50. Employee National Insurance is 8 per cent of the same amount, because the National Insurance Primary Threshold matches the personal allowance. In Scotland the Income Tax comes out a little different: the first part of taxable income is taxed at the 19 per cent starter rate and the rest falls in the 20 and 21 per cent bands.

A 40-hour week at the same rate gives £26,436.80 a year. Hours vary a lot between employers, so check your own contract.

Adding a workplace pension

At this salary you earn well above the £10,000 auto-enrolment trigger, so your employer must enrol you in a pension unless you are already in a qualifying scheme. The minimum contribution is 8 per cent of qualifying earnings, which are earnings between £6,240 and £50,270. At least 3 per cent comes from your employer and the rest from you, with your 5 per cent including tax relief.

On £24,784.50, qualifying earnings are £18,544.50. Your 5 per cent is £927.23 a year. As a basic-rate taxpayer you get tax relief on a fifth of that, so the cost to your take-home pay is £741.78 a year, about £62 a month. Take-home pay becomes about £20,622.66, or £1,718.56 a month, and your employer adds at least £556.34 to your pension.

Public sector employers usually put you in their own scheme instead. An NHS band 2 post, for example, uses the NHS Pension Scheme, where contribution rates are set from your whole pay and qualifying earnings play no part. Workplace pension auto-enrolment covers the minimum rules.

Student loans at this salary

A full-time National Living Wage salary of £24,784.50 sits below the Plan 1 (£26,900), Plan 2 (£29,385) and Plan 5 (£25,000) repayment thresholds, so no undergraduate loan repayments are taken. A postgraduate loan is different: you would repay 6 per cent of earnings above £21,000, which is about £227 a year. Thresholds are applied to each pay period, so a month with overtime can trigger a small repayment even when the annual total stays below the threshold.

Younger workers and apprentices

The National Living Wage covers workers aged 21 and over. Other legal minimums from 1 April 2026 are £10.85 an hour for workers aged 18 to 20, and £8.00 for under-18s and for apprentices who are under 19 or in the first year of their apprenticeship.

An 18-year-old working 37.5 hours at £10.85 earns £21,157.50 a year. Income Tax and National Insurance are each charged on £8,587.50, which gives £1,717.50 tax and £687.00 National Insurance, leaving £18,753.00 before any pension. Employers pay no employer National Insurance on under-21s up to £50,270, which makes young workers cheaper to employ than older ones at the same pay.

Where the National Living Wage applies in the public sector

The lowest public sector pay rates have been squeezed up against the legal minimum. The NHS had to raise band 1 and band 2 pay to £24,853, equal to £12.71 an hour, from 1 April 2026, before the 3.3 per cent award took both to £25,272. The NJC pay spine for council and school support staff deleted its lowest point from April 2026, so SCP 3 at £25,614 is now the bottom of the scale.

Some councils, schools and trusts are accredited real Living Wage employers and pay at least £14.10 an hour, or £15.45 in London, for the 2026-27 rates announced on 15 October 2026. Accredited employers should bring in the new rates as soon as possible and within six months. The real Living Wage vs the National Living Wage explains the difference.

If your pay seems too low

Divide your gross pay by your hours for the pay period to check your hourly rate. Deductions for uniforms or equipment, unpaid training time and unpaid travel between appointments can all take pay below the legal minimum. If you think you are being underpaid, you can raise it with your employer, contact ACAS for free advice, or complain to HMRC, which enforces minimum wage law. National Living Wage and minimum wage rates 2026 lists all the bands, and the take-home pay calculator works out net pay for any hourly rate.