Could you afford to work for £7.75 an hour?

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Three out of four UK small business owners do.

The minimum wage is £12.71 an hour. It is the legal floor. You cannot pay an adult over 21 less in this country. Unless, it turns out, you happen to employ yourself.

Enterprise Nation's latest Small Business Barometer found three in four small traders pay themselves less than £20,000 a year for an average working week of just under 50 hours.

Do the maths and it comes out at roughly £7.75 an hour - barely half the minimum wage for the people considered the backbone of the economy.

Which means, in the UK, you can target a niche, set up a business, shoulder all that responsibility, perhaps do your bit to revive your ailing local high street, and earn less than you would working at a fast-food chain.

No shade to fast-food establishments – I am a huge fan – but one would hope the aspiration and endeavour we as a nation are supposedly so proud of – and indeed depend on – would warrant more reward than a teenager might gain in their first-ever shift.

Small and medium-sized businesses are 99% of all businesses in Britain - 5.7 million of them.

They employ 16.9 million people, six in ten of every private sector job in the country, and they generate £2.8 trillion a year, half of all business turnover in the UK.

This is not a plucky........

© LBC