TENS of thousands of Scots are being paid less than the real living wage, an increase of 18 per cent from just three years ago.
New figures show that 467,000 Scots were paid less than the real living wage, up from 395,000 in 2013.
The real living wage is an independently set hourly rate which is calculated according to the basic cost of living in the UK.
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Calculated annually by the Resolution Foundation and overseen by the Living Wage Commission, it is based on the best available evidence on living standards in the UK.
The current real living wage rate is set at £8.45 per hour, which is a rise of 20p from the £8.25 rate as of November this year. In 2013 it was set at £7.65.
This compared to differences in the Consumer Prices Index was set at a rate of 2.1 per cent in November 2013, compared to 1.2 per cent in November this year.
But figures from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre show this year 20.1 per cent of employees in Scotland earned less than the real living wage, which is a 0.5 per cent rise from last year.
However, Scotland was the third-best performing region in the UK in 2016, following London and the South east.
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The real living wage differs from the UK Government’s “national living wage” introduced earlier this year as a minimum wage of £7.20 for those age 25 and older.
Employers that sign up to the voluntary living wage scheme in Scotland pay the higher rate to all workers over 18 in their organisation and are given accreditation.
Peter Kelly, director of the Poverty Alliance which runs the Scottish Living Wage Accreditation Initiative, said more needed to be done to tackle the issue.
He said: “We definitely have a problem with low pay in Scotland and the UK.
“Things like the voluntary living wage, that’s one of the key tools at our disposal to have an impact on work quality, at least in Scotland. So we really need more employers to get on board with this.”
John Dickie, director of the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland said: "Action on low pay alongside tackling childcare and other barriers to work must be a key plank in any strategy to end child poverty.”
Scottish Labour said the SNP must treat the figures as a wake-up call and do more to create high-skilled, high-paid jobs.
Read more: SNP's "duplicitous" budget undermining public trust, warns economist
Labour economy spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said: “The Poverty Alliance’s efforts to promote the real living wage are to be welcomed but the SNP Government’s actions have simply not been good enough. In the long term we need to shift our economy towards the high- skilled, high-paid jobs of the future if Scotland is to really thrive.”
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said it was continuing to promote fair pay through a number of approaches.
She said: “We are continuing to work with the Scottish Living Wage Accreditation Initiative to increase the number of employers paying the living wage, as we make progress towards the challenging target of 1,000 accredited employers by autumn 2017.”
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