The increase in the National Minimum Wage rate in October 2015 and the introduction of the National Living Wage in April 2016 led, in a short period of time, to an aggregated increase in the wage floor of over 10 per cent for workers in England aged 25 and over. The long-term care (LTC) sector is a labour intensive, low pay sector, and as such, can be substantially affected by changes in minimum wage. We assessed the effects of this exogenous wage increase on independent LTC providers by looking at effects on wages, employment, weekly hours, and employment contracts. Using data from the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) and applying a ‘before-after’ analysis, we found that the substantial increase in minimum wage had a strong and positive effect on wages in the LTC sector, but with substantial compression of the wage distribution at the lower end. Although, as in other studies, the employment effect was rather elusive, we found that for care homes this can be partially explained by a negative effect on total weekly hours. We also found positive but short-term effects on employment without guaranteed working hours (i.e. zero-hour contracts) for both residential and domiciliary care.

中文翻译：

---

最低工资政策对英格兰长期护理部门的影响

2015年10月国家最低工资率的提高以及2016年4月开始实施的国家生活工资，在短时间内导致25岁英格兰工人的最低工资总额累计增加了10％以上和结束。长期护理 (LTC) 部门是一个劳动密集型、工资低的部门，因此，可能会受到最低工资变化的重大影响。我们通过查看对工资、就业、每周工作时间和就业合同的影响，评估了这种外生工资增长对独立 LTC 提供商的影响。使用来自成人社会关怀劳动力数据集 (ASC-WDS) 的数据并应用“前后”分析，我们发现最低工资的大幅增加对 LTC 部门的工资产生了强大而积极的影响，但低端的工资分配大幅压缩。尽管与其他研究一样，就业效应相当难以捉摸，但我们发现对于养老院，这可以部分解释为对每周总小时数的负面影响。我们还发现，没有保障工作时间（即零小时合同）的住宿和家庭护理对就业有积极但短期的影响。