To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills what estimate he has made of the number of people in (a) Essex and (b) Castle Point who have been paid at the rate of the national minimum wage since its introduction. (318105)

Data for earnings are not available at the county or constituency level because of small sample sizes at these levels in the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE).

Due to rounding in the conversion of payroll data into hourly wage rates and small sample sizes for 16 to 17 and 18 to 21-year-olds in ASHE, it is not possible at the regional level to infer the number of employees earning exactly at the national minimum wage (NMW) with sufficient certainty. However it is possible to estimate the number who were paid at or below the NMW.

At the Government office region level the most recent figure from BIS analysis of the 2009 ASHE indicates the number of jobholders who were paid at or below the NMW in April 2009 in the east of England region was 64,000.