The percentage of people earning less than the living wage has more than trebled in the last five years.

Statistics Isle of Man, a branch of the Cabinet Office, has released the Earnings Survey report, which identifies the makeup of earnings of island-based employees.

The report shows that while the living wage went up in 2022 to £11.05 an hour, the number of people earning it went down, as 16.9% of employees were taking home less than that.

As well as being up from 10.1% in 2021, the percentage of workers earning less than the living wage has risen from 5.6% in 2017.

While the living wage is not a legal minimum wage, it is the rate which the government considers necessary to ‘allow people the basic opportunities and choices necessary for them to participate in society’.

In the same 2017 to 2022 period, the number of people earning the minimum wage has dropped from 5% to 4.5%. However that percentage had dropped to as low as 1.3% in 2021 before more than trebling in 2022.

In its report, Statistics Isle of Man said: ‘In both cases, this is at least in part due to significant increases in both the Living and Minimum Wages.’

However, Douglas councillor and Manx Labour Party member Devon Waton has labelled the figures as ‘shocking’.

Mr Watson added: ‘The rich have grown richer but in real terms, for the average worker, there has been no wage growth in the past decade.’

The report also shows that while nominal median and average weekly pay have risen compared with 2021, ‘both remain below a ten-year high in 2017 once inflation is taken into account’.

Tynwald has previously voted to support matching the legal hourly rate with the voluntary wage in phases by 2025.

However, based on the figures released by Statistics Isle of Man, the gap between the living wage and those earning it has only increased as the cost of living crisis has grown and inflation spiralled for much of the last year.

There has also been a slight drop in the average weekly gender pay gap, but the average remains above 15%, the median gap is just above 5%.

The other key takeaways from the report are that full-time employees worked an average of 37.7 hours a week, which is the same as the year before and includes an hour of overtime.

Statistics Isle of Man also took a random sample of workers to represent a breakdown of employees across the island and found that 71% of those worked full time, 19% worked past time and 10% were on zero hour contracts.