Thousands of workers will wake up to £1,144 pay rise in March. Sainsbury’s – which is the second largest supermarket in the country – will raise the minimum annual pay for full-time workers outside London from £22,882 to £24,026 by August 2025.
Hourly-paid workers at Sainsbury’s and Argos will see their pay rise from £12 to £12.45 in March, with a further increase to £12.60 in August. For staff in London, the hourly rate will increase from £13.15 to £13.70 in March, before rising again to £13.85 in August.
Simon Roberts, chief executive of Sainsbury’s, highlighted the company’s market-leading performance. He said: “Driven by our leading combination of quality, value and service, we have achieved seven consecutive quarters of volume performance ahead of the market and further accelerated our two-year volume growth.
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“The strength of our customer service and operational performance stood us apart in delivering our biggest ever Christmas. Customers shopped later than ever and we achieved our highest ever sales in the final days before Christmas.”
The pay boost comes after Sainsbury’s cheered its “biggest ever” Christmas period, with grocery sales up 4.1% in the 16 weeks to January 4. Overall group sales, not counting fuel, were also up 2.7% across the same time period.
Mr Roberts told The Sun in November the supermarket was facing a £140million hit from the hike to employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) in April. Currently, businesses pay employer NICs at 13.8% on salaries of £9,100 and above.
But this rate will be hiked to 15% and the threshold at which they are paid lowered to £5,000 from April 6. Mr Roberts said in November: “It will lead to inflation and it’s pretty clear it’s going to come pretty fast. Given the low margins of the industry, there isn’t the capacity to absorb this level of unexpected cost inflation.”