A £15 per hour minimum wage would impact half of full-time workers across Scotland.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has said that the minimum wage should be increased to £15 per hour.
The minimum wage is currently set at £9.50 an hour for workers over the age of 23, £9.18 for 21 and 22 year olds, and £6.83 per hour for 18 to 20 year olds.
People would often struggle on these wages before the cost of living crisis, and with inflation passing 10% things are only going to get worse.
A wage of £15 per hour for a full-time worker on a standard 37-hour week works out as a salary of £28,860 a year before tax.
That’s just below the national average of £31,419, according to the latest earnings data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
However, regional variations mean that a raise in minimum wage would impact more full-time workers in some regions of the UK than others.
The average full-time salaries of six local authorities in Scotland are less than the £15 per hour equivalent - Argyll and Bute (£26,679), Clackmannanshire (£27,858), Dumfries and Galloway (£27,566), East Dunbartonshire (£23,851), Midlothian (£26,285), and Scottish Borders (£25,683).
This suggests that an increase to a minimum wage of £15 per hour would put half of those areas’ full-time workers on minimum wage.
There are a total of 167 local authority areas in the UK where the average full-time worker earns less than £28,860 a year, suggesting that a £15 per hour minimum wage would see their salaries increase.
That includes 31 areas where 60% of workers would see an uplift.
Last week, the ONS revealed that workers saw their pay lag behind inflation at a record rate over the three months to June.
Regular pay, excluding bonuses, increased by 4.7% over the quarter but failed to keep up with rampant inflation, which struck 9.4% in June and accelerated to another 40-year high last month.
The TUC has said the UK Government must deliver a “plan to strengthen and extend collective bargaining across the economy” to help boost pay for workers.
Proposals also include corporate governance reforms and a “life-long learning and skills strategy” designed to address labour shortages.
Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC, said: “Every worker should be able to afford a decent standard of living.
“But millions of low-paid workers live wage packet to wage packet, struggling to get by – and they are now being pushed to the brink by eye-watering bills and soaring prices.
“We can’t keep lurching from crisis to crisis, working families need long-term financial security – that means reversing the destructive trend of standstill wages.
“Ministers should introduce fair pay agreements to get pay and productivity rising in low-paid sectors.”
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