The pay gap between Britain’s middle class and low earners has shrunk to its lowest level on record after significant jumps in the minimum wage, analysis has revealed.

The pay-per-hour difference between workers on the lowest rates and those in the middle has narrowed the most since at least the mid-1970s, according to the Resolution Foundation.

Big uplifts in the minimum wage mean that the average worker makes only 1.5 times as much as someone in the lowest-paid tenth of all employees.

The gap was at its widest in the mid-1990s when middle earners made 1.8 times more per hour than those on the lowest wages.

The decline comes after a record cash uplift to the National Living Wage in April when it rose by 9.8pc to £11.44 an hour.

Such leaps have brought down the difference in pay between low and middle earners, according to Nye Cominetti from the Resolution Foundation.

He said: “It has really been a story of the minimum wage. In the early 2000s we had a minimum wage that was quite cautious, it didn’t go up particularly high and so the gap stabilised.

“But in the last 10 years or so the Conservatives have had really ambitious minimum wage policies and that is what brought the gap down.”

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