The shocking salary Kate Middleton pays assistant: 'Very, very low'

You'd be forgiven if you thought being an employee of the Royal Family would earn you the big bucks.

But the surprising salary to be Kate Middleton's assistant has been revealed as she hunts for a new employee.

A LinkedIn advert for the personal assistant to the assistant private secretary to the Duchess of Cambridge says applicants must have an awareness or interest in Kate's work and activities and the ability to exercise tact and discretion and maintain confidentiality at all times.

The successful candidate will be responsible for managing and controlling the assistant private secretary's diary, liaising with contacts, arranging meetings and acting as their front-line representative.

There have already been almost 400 applicants for the job on LinkedIn alone.

On a job ad on the Royal Vacancies website, the salary is listed at £27,500 ($47,460) for 37.5 hours a week. The salary is about on par with a nurse in central London, who make between £25,655 - £31,534 ($44,559 - $54,770) a year and doesn't get the perks of working at Buckingham Palace.

However, people thought the assistant should be earning more, considering they are employed by the Royal Family.

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One dubbed the wage "pathetic" and said, "her weekly clothing allowance is more than the yearly salary to be her assistant".

"When you see that Kate Middleton's assistant salary job posting offers [$47,460] for the year ... you can understand why the royal household staff leaks to the press as 'sources inside the Palace'. These tidbits probably add up and equal their base salary at the end of the year," one wrote.

"This is very, very low pay for a position based in Central London, sorry. Kate needs to open her purse a bit more," another said.

"That's an absolute rip off, considering the cost of living in London," a third added.

"[$47K] is like a slave's wage considering cost of living and recent inflation," somebody else commented.

A number of people made comments about Kate's expensive outfits, saying she could probably afford to up the salary.

In March she was snapped wearing an elegant dark green Laura Green London dress, which is valued at $5,700.

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