Government minister Matthew Hancock caused uproar when he suggested that workers under the age of 25 are not “productive” enough to warrant being paid the new National Living Wage.
In this summer’s budget, Chancellor George Osborne announced a new minimum wage would come into force from next April, starting at £7.20 an hour and increasing to £9 by 2020.
But people under 25 will stay on the old minimum wage rates, meaning they are entitled to £6.70 an hour (and those under 18 get even less).
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Hancock defended the different rates by saying: “This was an active policy choice... Anybody who has employed people knows that younger people, especially in their first jobs, are not as productive, on average."
This prompted a huge outcry on social media, with many people using the #at25 hashtag to show just how productive they had been by 25.
HuffPost UK has also found some under-25s who qualify as fairly productive...