Amazon's floor hits £15.10 on 27 September. NHS band 2 is £12.92

Amazon will pay its UK operations staff at least £15.10 an hour from 27 September 2026, £2.18 more than the £12.92 that sits at the bottom of the NHS pay scale in England. At some sites Amazon’s floor is £16.10. The company announced it on 16 September, and says the rise is up to 5.6 per cent.

Band 2 is the lowest band the NHS in England recruits into. Band 1 closed to new entrants on 1 December 2018.

The rates, side by side

Rate	Hourly	Full-time week	From
National Living Wage, 21 and over	£12.71	—	1 April 2026
NHS band 2, bottom point, England	£12.92	37.5 hours	1 April 2026
NHS band 3, bottom point, England	£13.17	37.5 hours	1 April 2026
Amazon operations, standard	£15.10	40 hours	27 September 2026
Amazon operations, higher-pay sites	£16.10	40 hours	27 September 2026

The £31,408 is a 40-hour week

This is the part the coverage left out. Amazon’s announcement gives an annual figure of £31,408 but never says what working week it assumes. The arithmetic settles it: £15.10 across 2,080 hours — 40 a week for 52 weeks — is exactly £31,408. The second rate confirms the basis. £16.10 over the same 2,080 hours is exactly £33,488, which is the higher annual salary Amazon published.

Agenda for Change runs a 37.5-hour week in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. So the two annual salaries are not measuring the same amount of work.

Band 2 starts at £25,272 a year. Set against £31,408, the gap looks like £6,136.

Put Amazon’s rate on the NHS week instead — £15.10 for 37.5 hours, 52 weeks — and it comes to £29,445. The like-for-like gap at the bottom is £4,173 a year. Still large. But £1,963 smaller than the headline gap.

Scotland is different again. NHS Scotland moved from a 37-hour week to 36 hours on 1 April 2026, so Scottish hourly rates and Scottish annual salaries do not compare with English ones at all.

Council unions asked for £15 this year

The NJC pay claim for 2026/27, lodged in December 2025, asked for a minimum rate of £15 an hour on the local government pay spine. The settlement, agreed on 24 August 2026, was 3.3 per cent on pay points 3 to 43, backdated to 1 April 2026. Point 2 was deleted from the spine on the same date.

So a private warehouse floor has passed the figure council unions asked for, about a month after that claim was settled for less.

What the hourly rate leaves out

An hourly rate is not the whole payslip, and the comparison stops being simple the moment you look past it.

NHS staff working nights, weekends and bank holidays are paid an unsocial hours enhancement on top — see our unsocial hours page. The NHS pension takes a contribution from your pay and the employer adds a much larger one. Annual leave under Agenda for Change starts at 27 days plus general public holidays, rising to 29 days after five years and 33 after ten.

None of that shows up in a rate per hour, and the warehouse figure and the ward figure are not doing the same job.

To see what any of these rates is actually worth after tax, National Insurance and pension, use the NHS take-home calculator. For the council spine, the current award is on our NJC pay award page.

Where these figures come from

• Amazon announces above-inflation pay rise to a minimum starting salary of more than £31,000 for full-time UK operations employees — Amazon UK
• Pay scales for 2026/27 — NHS Employers
• National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates — GOV.UK
• Pay negotiations 2026-27 — South East Employers
• NJC 2026-2027 pay update — NICVA
• Reduction of the working week for Agenda for Change staff in NHS Scotland: Fairer Scotland Duty Assessment — Scottish Government
• NHS Pension Scheme employer contribution rates 2026/27 — NHS Business Services Authority
• NJC pay claim 2026-27 — Local Government Association

Every figure traces to a dated document — the line this section is named after. If one here is wrong, tell us and it gets fixed publicly. Work out your own figures.