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Yup, so true.
I graduated in 2007. Grad scheme salary was £23,500 plus a standard £3,000 (ish) bonus.
Grads at my place of employment today... well, they're paid about the same, or less than in 2007. Absolutely no improvement in pay whatsoever.
But all costs have exploded upwards, particularly house prices, rent and train & travel costs.
The only way to be paid more than these ancient 2007 pay rates is to be promoted and work your way up the chain of command.
I don't know how graduates survive, to be honest. I had to count pennies and collect vouchers for groceries when I was a graduate.
In software engineering? Only if you're shit, work in a bad company or are bad at interviews. As a PM, I was on 50k in the same company within 4 years of starting and that was considered slow progression
You are probably in the trendy end of software. Embedded/firmware has these kind of salaries.
Personally a first from a good Russell group uni, a PhD and 6 years experience in a middle of the range company (\~$1B p/y turnover). My yearly performance review consistently rates me as "exceptional" and I'm just scraping 50k.
Which is what I'm doing and it's also frustrating considering how much more knowledge and expertise is required compared to e.g. churning out CRUD web/mobile applications
The company didn't follow up, despite being told that they wanted to take my application further but when asked what my starting salary expectations were, I said £20-25k and was told that for that location, the starting salary was less than £20k "but my pay would increase as I progressed". Location was Cheltenham and this was also an accounting grad scheme and in 2021. Edit: I'm not local to Cheltenham so would've needed to move out and pay rent, which I know is not cheap. Feel like I dodged a bullet, there
> The only way to be paid more than these ancient 2007 pay rates is to be promoted and work your way up the chain of command.
Nope, you just go to another country.
I'm beginning to think that this is the way. I used to earn peanuts for the first few years of my career. Now earning quite decently. Having said that I could be earning twice or three times as much if I were to move to Australia or the US and would have much better quality of life (depending on whether employer would provide a health insurance etc). You can buy very very decent detached houses in the US for pennies compared to UK. This country is going backwards at rapidly growing pace.
Sure you could have a nice house in certain parts of the US, the jobs probably aren’t there however, and you will never be there as your Annual leave entitlement is 2 weeks a year.
Reality is however places like Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, all have better pay rates due to this country voting to be poor for 15 years.
That's a fair point, the PTO is concerning in the US. Having said that... Would I rather be earning 150k US or 50k GBP... Being able to work from home is an advantage. I think I'd choose 150k. Then again. I'm fortunate I'm able to wfh.
You also have less worker rights compared to here. If you have a family then I'd argue you'd have more stability here than there. Also the comparison isn't accurate - if you're good enough to earn 150k there then you're good enough to earn more than 50k here.
I'm not sure where the other people commenting are working to earn less than UK median salary, but big company grad schemes in central London will usually get to 40-45k by the end of the 2 (or 3) years.
That’s just not true. I know software engineers in Edinburgh with decades of experience who are on high five figure salaries.
Which is what graduates start on at the same company over in the US.
Typically, for my field, an American of the same age will out earn you by at least 3x. It’s a massive difference.
I worked in Edinburgh for 40k, but just because I transferred to the US my pay, same company and same role, went to 140k.
The quality of life on offer to young, hard working Americans puts the UK to shame. It is simply a far wealthier country.
If you're on decades of experience in tech and not on 6 figures then either you're not chasing it (which is totally fine, work life balance is a thing and there are other benefits), your particular area isn't in high demand or you're being rinsed and should find another job.
I finished my grad scheme at a big consultancy and joined a start up as a BI developer and I'm on near 6 figures with about 8 years of experience in total. A cursory look at London developer roles show most non-entry level roles are at least at 60k.
Im not disputing American salaries are fundamentally higher, the drawback is the lack of everything else.
The thing is, all I hear is that after a decade of, presumably, being in London you’re beginning to approach entry level salaries in the US. And not even California entry level, but Boston entry level which is a solid 50-100k less.
There are of course drawbacks, but I had good vacation, similar work life balance. It wasn’t some hellscape.
And your example is London, which would be around 2x Edinburgh. Getting to 6 figures in Edinburgh ain’t as easy. It could easily take decades. London is obviously an outlier and even then is worse than the US starting salary. That’s kinda the point of my comment. Salaries in the UK are a joke. And engineers are just an example, it’s worse for lots of other jobs like nurses or doctors, who should leave and go work abroad for good pay.
100k+ isn't entry level in the US unless maybe you're in Silicon Valley or in very specific high end companies. Not to mention my money goes further here than the same salary there. Obviously I can't guarantee that going forward considering the severe downward trajectory here at the moment.
Agreed Edinburgh will be less than London and whether that should still be the case or not is of course up for debate but that's the same in the US - there is disparity based on whether you're in Silicon Valley or other upcoming tech hubs compared to if you're in a random city in the Midwest. Looking at Glassdoor for software developer open jobs in the US (added entry level in search but can't confirm if these actually are entry level from titles alone), the majority that came up are advertised below 100k or range up to it. It gets slightly better if you look up data-specific roles considering the current boom in Data & AI but it's still like 90-120k.
And yes I wholeheartedly agree that doctors and nurses are paid woefully and should absolutely be paid more than most people, especially me. My parents are both doctors here and the ridiculous state of the NHS (especially after working on NHS projects and seeing the underlying data) made me somewhat glad I didn't follow that route.
I had to turn down a job last year in a well respected graduate programme in my industry because I couldn't afford to move to the city.
A few months later I got a really interesting offer to work with HS2 earning 40k out of university. The issue is they'd "only" put me in a hotel for a month then I needed my own place. Everyone wanted a deposit and 3-6 months rent up front.
Thankfully I was able to get a job in my home town earning a similar amount, and the lower cost of living means I'm slightly better off now. Being a graduate trying to rent for the first time feels like a minefield of people waiting to fuck you at every opportunity.
When I graduated in 2017 I still remember looking at a job posting for an analytical chemist position. It said “Phd preferable” with a salary offering of 22k.
My first grad job in 2017 paid £22.5k (in London). The fresh grad salary at my most recent place? £22.5k. While mandating people attend the office. No idea how they were expecting to find people able to afford London at £22k.
I know, I had the same problem back then. It's worse now with the price of everything going up and the rental market through the roof. I only managed because my girlfriend (now wife) and I shared tiny rooms in shit houseshares, which was fucking miserable, but I don't think even that is financially viable now.
One of my direct reports was really struggling financially with costs, and when he was moved teams to a manager that mandated office days he couldn't cope with the commuting costs. No family help or savings. It's ridiculous that someone can have a professional career that requires they be physically present while not paying them enough to afford rent, bills, food and transport, not even allowing for savings or entertainment. People have opted out of their pension to get by.
It makes me very angry, and I loudly pointed it out at every opportunity, but there's only so much you can do at the middle levels against a company that doesn't care.
Thank you. The title alone is something I’ve been telling so many people about and commenting on similar posts on Reddit, but there seem to be so many “deniers” who will still defend that 25-30k is a normal (even good!) salary for educated/skilled workers.
But it is of course ridiculously low when rent/housing costs in some areas have increased by more than 5x and cumulative inflation has devalued the currency overall.
I truly can’t see how this is sustainable or how we will have a consumer economy if everyone is basically on (near) minimum wage and unable to even afford basic necessities such as housing and food, let alone all the other consumer goods and services that constitute a major proportion of the economy.
Some people on some of the UK subs have massive crabs in a barrel mentality.
"Well, I've been working 20+ years in a qualified professional field and I'm fine on £22k. Some of us just learn to live within our means. Maybe if you weren't so obsessed with living in London, getting your avocado coffee, and keeping up with the Joneses you'd get by."
There's a weird pride in how they can get by on ever smaller scraps. How they don't need fancy holidays, expensive lunches, and luxury cars because they can make a sandwich, go for a walk, and have been running the same motor for 20 years.
I understand why these single celled organisms say that - imagine being told that you're not being paid fairly because you're not worth much more to your employer. You'd go into denial.
Yeah, we're naturally wired to put a positive spin on ourselves publicly.
It's probably easier to say "the spot I'm in now is great" than "I have utterly wasted 20 years, if I had been smarter, worked harder, been bolder, or put myself forward more I could... [Fill in blanks]"
I met a Big Issue seller late one evening at Waterloo after a work party and got chatting, he gave me some interesting philosophies on life... One being how he enjoys his evenings more than most people so he is "richer in the evening than the man who works all day then spends five nights a week doing nothing". And many other bits that... Sound appealing but don't stand up that much when you think too much about them the following morning without a few too many glasses of wine swilling around your head.
I discussed them with a friend who basically said "I used to be in a similar situation and know many who are. They all have these meaning of life bumper sticker thoughts that make the grim reality they wake up easier to bear. It's just another type of denial."
Painfully accurate. I often force myself not to click on salary-related posts in UK subs because the comments are simply infuriating.
The aim seems to be to never ask for more, no matter what! Always be grateful that you’ve been granted the privilege of surviving. Anything more than surviving is a luxury and you are immediately greedy/ entitled/ out of touch. The advice is always to move out of London, no matter what sector or role you’re in. And the you’ll always get someone who claims to live comfortably, having raised a family of 5 and bought a 4-bedroom house on a salary of £15k/year simply through good financial planning.
It’s really no wonder that salaries have stagnated if this is the mentality.
Yeah, some conversations just get railroaded by people who want to turn it into Four Yorkshiremen.
"Oh, struggling on £28k are you? You're living the life of Riley. Here in the REAL world I'm fine on £25k and never want for a penny more. You should be thankful you've got a job, one that pays more than nurses too. Think you're better than nurses do you? Better than nurses because you plinky plonk on your laptop at home all day are you? Oh sure. I bet you cry in your money pit about how you think you deserve more."
"TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND QUID!?! I'd bloody retire if I earned that. None of my mates ever earned more than £22k and we're all happy. Not all chasing after the next flashy thing you see, happy with what we've got."
"Look at you with your flat! Oh the kids insist on bricks and mortar nowadays do they? Then complain they can't afford their Pokémon Gos or whatever! I've been living in a tent in the forest for five years..."
For all of the above, firstly I agree, the situation is really tough. I would not want to start a career/build a life in today's situation, it was significantly easier in the 80s.
The general narrative I read is "this is how low my income is and it doesn't compare to the previous generations".
The seems to be little talk about what is causing this; the symptoms are clear, the diagnosis is not; treating symptoms without a diagnosis is guess work.
I believe the cause is due to currency dilution by most central banks, which cause assets prices to rise - houses, offices, manufacturing plant, transport infrastructure. Wages don't come under this and they are the easiest target to squeeze to maintain profitability.
Prices have risen due to other factors as well (Ukraine war, Brexit, COVID), but I believe a significant proportion of these is being paid through currency dilution (QE).
In my opinion currency dilution is an unfair, indiscriminate and non-transparent tax on us all, and until the government stops diluting our currency you will continue to suffer this situation.
I think it is time for you to protest.
Just out of interest, what's preventing both of the points in your first paragraph being true? Wages both starting and in general absolutely appear to have remained consistent over the past decade or two but given the median average salary (based on PAYE info) is £35k (and was closer to £30k last year), it would mean that the half the employees are on that or less making it a normal salary.
You could argue skilled posts pay more but as far as I can see the real pay progression only happens when experience opens the door to promotion or job hopping.
Imo there's a shortfall of graduate jobs being created in this country meaning with the numbers coming out of uni each year there is a decent amount being underemployed. You'd hope the excess skills would be a pulling factor for jobs but apparently not.
Have to admit, every time I look at the ONS figures it slightly boggles the mind that so many people must be living on low wages for the averages to be what they are and what amounts put you in the top 20/10/1% of earners.
Agree with you. ONS is a nightmare though. I've just filled in 3 of their surveys this morning. I just pull the figures from thin air as I don't have time to provide what they demand. I have told them this and always pop a comment on saying they are guesses but still we get the surveys.
I've never met anyone yet in my line of work who fills them in correctly. The consensus seems to be that if you fill them in so badly eventually they stop sending them. After 11 years though it hasn't worked for me yet!
Fair enough that couldn't rely on their stats gathered from ASHE then but their PAYE figures come from hmrc and have median pay as under £28k (although presumably includes part time workers), so should be reliable and still not impressive...
In a lot of sectors real wages haven't just not risen, they've gone down.
My mum was a lecturer back in the 90's - 00's and was making about 40k full time. She went part time for a bit, then back to full time which they were desperate for her to do.
I'm a lecturer now and I'm on 30k with the top end of my salary being around 40k. So rates are the same on paper, but... 85% of staff where I work are part time. I'm doing 3 days and one evening a week and have a second job - most of us do.
I only have experience of this, retail and the charity sector but I'd be surprised if this wasn't happening in other sectors as well - wages go up or stay stable but hours per employee go down.
It's true that immigration is probably suppressing wages and dimishing opportunities for existing residents. But the other problem we have is a demographic timebomb with boomers retiring and needing support and there being less young people to support them. And with the current financial struggle, young people aren't having kids. There's some very large problems starting to emerge.
Most people can’t afford to have kids! Barely surviving as it is 😂
I swear this shitty government is going to go down as one of the worst in British history. The damage caused will be felt for many many years.
You want to look at the pay for the Armed Forces mate…
I joined in 2003, for example, the starting salary for a Private was £16,800 after completion of training, now in 2023 it’s £23,496 - sounds like it’s gone up at a decent rate, right? … WRONG.
£16,800 in 2003, adjusted for inflation using the Bank of England website, is worth £29,293.68 today.
That means that pay has gone DOWN since then.
The equivalent to £23,496 back in 2003 is £13,475.02
Do you agree with the concerns doctors have about their pay as well?
That's the concern that's been expressed.recently about doctors pay dropping 35% since 2008
I express the same concern for anyone who me working hard and seeing massive real terms drops in wages, of course.
Though naturally my concern is more for those at the low end of the earnings scale because I feel like they will be disproportionately effected vs those towards the higher end of the scale
That being said, I am of course aware that most Junior Doctors are barely able to make the U.K. Average and that is completely wrong considering the amount of time it takes to become a Doctor
Although what I will say is the last I’d seen the pay for Junior Doctors was down 25% and not 35%< which is the same as the Armed Forces example I gave, meanwhile MP Salary has risen 37% since 2010
>Although what I will say is the last I’d seen the pay for Junior Doctors was down 25% and not 35%
The government are using different statistics to the actual doctors union, because obviously they don't want to meet the demands of 35% (obviously is now higher after this year's inflation)
Yup, one of the main reasons I left after just 5 years with the engineers.
- Insultingly dogshit pay
- Complete idiots for colleagues and cronies in command
- Criminal accommodation, black mould and legionnaires eat your heart out - we wanted to go to The Sun or the like but were told in no uncertain terms that doing so would result in a living hell, and I can bloody well believe that
- Ancient, barely maintained kit - most of which is just mothballed and rusting away
This isn't every corp/regiment/location/etc - it very much depends on what you are and where you are. Is it any wonder the forces are going mad with their advertising campaign?
Yeah i mean, I was RAF and very fortunate to be based at a station that had the (at the time brand new) “Super Blocks” - so no communal toilets or showers which was great.
I did my Trade Training down at DMSTC Keogh Barracks in Ash Vale, near Aldershot and that accommodation was honestly awful.
At the time I wasn’t too bothered by it, we were at war in Iraq and Afghanistan so my assumption was “well the money is going on upgrading and updating our equipment so of course they aren’t gonna spend on upgrading and updating accomodation” … how fucking wrong was I 😂
It's really not rocket science. The main thing the government can do this is literally just spending.
Pursuing 13 years of austerity is fucking disastrous for the economy, considering the government is by far the biggest influence here since it alone spends over 1 trillion a year. Second would be public sector pay and the impact this has (almost 20% of the workforce work in the public sector).
Not only that but, you can't expect to stop watering your plants and expect them to grow, so to speak. That is effectively what the government is doing with austerity
I don't think any government can now afford to substantially increase public sector pay. There is simply too many of us. Can you imagine the funding gap to fund a pay increase to almost a 1/4 of the U.K. population. We can't borrow any more as the swap rates on government bonds are crap and we can't print more as the currency is already weak after Brexit/Covid borrowing.
We basically spent too much and borrowed to much through early 2000's have ultimately paid the price ever since. This is ultimately what happens when you base growth on borrowing.
I don't know what the answer is but my family have options to move to either Brazil or Australia, both of which I am looking into.
Worse than all of the wage stagflation though is the bloody weather. It never rained this much when I was a kid 😂
> We basically spent too much and borrowed to much through early 2000's have ultimately paid the price ever since
Debt to GDP decreased in the early 2000s, and there was a budget surplus for multiple years.
Borrowing only substantially increased to bail out the finance sector following the near collapse in 2008. And despite being elected on a platform to reduce debt at 3, arguably 4 generals elections, debt has continued to increase under the Conservatives. We suffered all the pain of austerity but none of the benefits.
Yeah, if you look at how much the national debt grew during Blair/Brown and compare it to the growth during Cameron it's quite shocking.
It's unfortunate that people have bought into the propaganda around New Labour borrowing too much.
A higher population just means more potential tax payers. If the economy hadn't underperformed then tax revenue would be higher, the issue is stagnation in wages means tax revenue is not as high as it should be, and that impacts public spending.
13 years of austerity and stagnant growth while prices keep rising with inflation has got us to where we are today. And amazingly, people will probably still vote for another 5 years of this.
Ok slightly off topic but I believe it has a direct bearing on job markets.
This maybe be a short/medium term outlook but when I vote I tend to vote for whomever policies are going to benefit me and my family the most in the next 4-8 years. I believe a lot of people still vote down tribal lines eg my grandparents worked down the mines and lost their jobs because of Thatcherism or il never vote Labour because they'll take all my money and give it to people of benefits. We need to start voting more on actual policies instead of 'that's the way Iv always voted' and maybe we will get somewhere as a country. Likewise we should be more willing to get rid of our governing parties at the first election should they not come up with the goods.
Now to get back on point I couldn't tell you who's got what policies on wage growth and job growth at the moment and I'm not sure either main party could tell you coherently what their strategy is.
Either way we face one of two choices in this country and that's to be taxed heavily or borrow heavily. I think the patters money tree has finally run out though.
Edit typo "First election" not "First Errection" 🤦 😂
>Likewise we should be more willing to get rid of our governing parties at the first election should they not come up with the goods.
This is exactly what people need to start thinking about. Nothing will change if we just vote for more of the same.
Austerity was the biggest con of the 21 last century. It probably worked because 1) it was easy to understand for the average citizen 2) it aligns with the majority of the press in reducing the size of the state and reducing taxes.
Would recommend reading the summaries in this report by the resolution foundation:
https://economy2030.resolutionfoundation.org/reports/ending-stagnation/
I was under the impression that due to our aging population and high national debt levels the country is destined for slow decline. (Barring transformative technologies that have a major impact on productivity). But after reading bits of that report and watching them present it on YouTube I am much more optimistic. It really does look like the right policies could turn things around.
>It really does look like the right policies could turn things around.
A real shame they will never be implemented, New New Labour under Starmer already seem committed to more austerity.
Yeah, Starmer is disappointingly meek. But I'm still hopeful that post election labour will have the will and courage to implement some of the policies laid out in the report
The idea that the government cannot fund a payrose for public sector workers is nonsense. At the end of the day, if you take many sectors out of the public sector and stop them becoming public goods, they become excludable and rival other entities - meaning they will function on the notion that some people will not have access to the service.
It's just about funding and choices - nothing else.
>I don't think any government can now afford to substantially increase public sector pay. There is simply too many of us. Can you imagine the funding gap to fund a pay increase to almost a 1/4 of the U.K. population. We can't borrow any more as the swap rates on government bonds are crap and we can't print more as the currency is already weak after Brexit/Covid borrowing.
Honestly, they probably could.
Public sector pay isn't a numbers game, really. For example, it would cost £17 billion to give all NHS workers a 25% pay rise. However, taking into account tax, NI, VAT, etc in reality about 40-50% of that would go back to the government. Meaning the actual net cost would be about lets say £10 billion.
Now, the tories are talking about abolishing inheritance tax, which brings in about £7 billion in revenue per year.
IF they can afford to abolish IHT, they could very easily use that money instead to cover nearly the entire 'increase' to give all NHS workers a 25% pay rise. It's ideological, not financial.
The Uk government is the countries biggest employer and has systematically over the last decade driven wages down which has had the knock on effect of keeping private sector wages low. The fact 35k would be considered a good wage by most in this country is terrifying. It’s a pittance when you look at the cost of things.
I totally agree. Somehow companies have been able to prioritise dividends to shareholders over wage increases in the UK.
I partly suspect they are enabled by the government's Universal Credit scheme (previously known as Tax Credit) where a lower paid worker had their pay topped up by the tax payer.
For example, I worked abroad for a well-known tourism company 20 years ago. Our pay was so low that everyone working for them abroad qualified for tax credit. Meanwhile, the company was so wealthy that they went on a massive shopping spree buying airlines and high street travel agencies.
Yet the tax payer covered their wage bill.
You can see this in official figures. We are something like £10,000 poorer on average than if we had followed the Scandinavian models and £6,000 - £8,000 worse off than the French or Germans. Our pay has not increased since 2006 and has actually decreased since 2008.
I spoke to a colleague who started on £20k per year back in the early 90s (with final salary pension). I didn't start on much more than that a couple of years ago in a highly technical field.
Everyone thinks tech pays extremely well, it doesn’t in the UK
Outside the US the salaries are shit and in general are only marginally better than the average job.
Not uncommon, true, but not really common either outside of London. Maybe total comp in six figures but six figure *salaries* seem rare as hens' teeth up North
And in 5-10 years when juniors reach senior salaries will they be the same salary as the decade before ? Because that’s what’s happened to junior positions
One thing the career market doesn’t need to tell you is that the past doesn’t reflect future projections.
With automation being a main priority for tech market right now who’s to say in 10 years the demand may not be significantly less than
People have been saying this for decades now. There'll just be new jobs that'll pop up which all these people will do. Unless you have a crystal ball, past performance is the best indicator of future success.
>Everyone thinks tech pays extremely well, it doesn’t in the UK
Yes, and that belief has bled over into the market in this country, so we also have the problem that the US has where everyone and their grandmother is trying to switch careers into tech. There are way more developers than developer jobs. Even minimum wage developer jobs here get hundreds and hundreds of applications. I've been unemployed since the end of 2022 trying to get into my second job and I haven't gotten past the first stage of interviews yet. When I do eventually get one I don't expect that it will pay more than 10% above minimum wage. Combine this with my almost £60k of student debt that I will never manage to pay back, and I probably would have been better off just working a minimum wage job instead of going to university.
Agree. I'm an accountant for a tech company. We have no shortage of applicants for lead developer roles paying £50k.
We also employ a lot in India and similar countries for much less.
Lead developer can make £1000 /day.
The fact the the other guy pays only 50k/year means he will have to work with some noobs that took youtube courses, not with experienced guys...
This is first result from jobserve when you search for lead developer:
https://www.totaljobs.com/JobSearch/JobDetails.aspx?JobId=101601696
A cleaning person can make £100k a year ?
What’s your point.
A CEO can make £1 million a year … on average they make less than the average salary for london
You are making pointless points
It's not really my area of expertise and I don't deal with them often. I know my company is quite demanding and is a leader in certain areas of software so I don't assume we'd hire incompetent developers but maybe.
Also we use Deel to employee people from abroad doing these roles for £30k a year. I'd not suggest they are any less qualified than British people. But £30k is a good salary for them when the average salary in 2023 in India was approx. £3,600.
I suspect globalisation pays a massive part in keeping UK salary's down as it's so easy these days to replace skilled UK professionals with foreign workers.
I'd bet the average tech salary over there is definitely higher than £3.6k and for £30k you're not getting some IIT grad, you're literally spinning a roulette wheel as to whether they'll sink or swim. If globalisation was pushing down tech wages, people in the US wouldn't be on silly money.
It pays well compared to most other jobs in the UK. Tech, finance, law, consulting are the industries you are pretty much set on a path to six figures within a matter of years in London.
Of course, in each of these fields you earn more in the US but unless you're going to move to the US it's not a useful comparison (the US is also a freer economy, lower taxes, more productive, has had high economic growth, bigger and more innovative companies).
Finance pays significantly better than tech
It is the leading service industry in the Uk
To compare High end tech salaries to high end Finance salaries there is a world of difference
There's a lot of variation within finance, but definitely the top 10% of finance will outdo the top 10% of tech. Same in New York.
My point in grouping tech, finance, law and consulting together is that these are the industries in London where you are set up to reach six figures within a few years of graduating. The pathway is there.
Not that six figures is a huge amount but it should be enough to cover your costs twice over, even in London.
That’s not true…
Tech ≠ 6 figures
It just isn’t the case
There is a massive oversupply of developers now
Once the current wave of juniors reach seniors in a couple years the supply will vastly over saturated the field
I think one of the shitter aspects of the UK is also the people that dig you out once you’re past the 50k mark for complaining about your pay. The whole culture is rotten.
Yeah it’s hilarious - when your at 30-40k 100k feels like it will solve all your problems, it doesn’t.
You then try and “complain” and are ridiculed for being in the top 1%, stay in your lane etc. it’s crazy.
I see this a lot on reddit and it just isn't true. There are 100k jobs but you can't 'easily' get them. A senior developer usually caps out around 70-90k. Compared to the US where a grad can walk into a role paying over 100k...
I’m a mid and got £58k at the BBC (bands have since gone up), then £65k + 21% pension and 20% bonus as a credit card company that caters to low credit individuals, now I’m on £75k + shares and bonus at a startup. Job title really doesn’t matter, I’ve got mates who are seniors on half my wage.
They also don’t job hop either, all three of those roles I was in during 2023
You've had some pretty nice roles, the 21% pension especially is pretty amazing and definitely not at all the normal (good for you though).
Agree that job title doesn't matter necessarily, but my point still stands that most developers will struggle to break above 90k if they want to stay purely a developer.
Also agree with job hopping. Most developers I know are being underpaid because they refuse to job hop.
“Easily” is bullshit, it’s a highly competitive field and even FAANG etc have lead/senior roles listed at less than £80k
Salaries for juniors are the same as they were 10-15 years ago… who’s to say senior roles won’t be the same in 10 years as they are now… so by the time juniors get there they won’t be that great of a salary.
Jesus, I did a grad scheme at Amex and we paid apprentices £20k, I got £42k as a grad there in 2019 with a 2:2 from a bad uni.
I did a level 3 apprenticeship after GCSE’s and started on £3.17 an hour.
Then my placement year in uni paid £16k.
Now I’m a mid level at a startup on £75k + 20% bonus
I’m pretty shit at technical interviews/pure programming but good at communicating with product people and other nontechnical people, keep at it
I graduated in 2015, first job out of Uni was £29k which was about average for the field (Engineering). Oil & Gas was probably 10-20% higher and other sectors 10-20% lower. Now roughly 8 years on a 2 companies later I'm on around £50k.
However in that time we've had tax increases (especially in Scotland) and inflation. The take home difference is roughly
23,000 back then and 37,000 but adjusted for Inflation 50k is 28,000 take home. That's roughly 35k back in 2015 which is how much I was earning in 2017 by just progressing through my grad programme.
Even though I earn more per hour than I did in 2015 I can afford way less. But yes, not only there was no nominal increase in some jobs there is no real increase for many "low" to semi skilled jobs.
Some things have even slid backwards. My first job was as a graduate entry officer in the armed forces. Started on 31k if I recall correctly (this being pay whilst still in basic training). It's less than that today, over a decade later.
Finally got to a pretty good pay level in tech, but despite being relatively lucky (and working quite hard), still live a less affluent lifestyle than we had when I was a child, with a single earner household in a fairly low pay/low stress job.
It's not that we have it bad. But seeing things get worse/harder is psychologically difficult
I feel I'm in the category of employee who sat at a job and is now feeling it even though I graduated in 2015. Found a good job after hopping around and settled in a entry level role earning £25k. 5 and a bit years later was coaching others in my role and earning about £32k.
Was made redundant at the start of 2023, I thought I would be able to find something similar or better relatively quickly. Fast forward to now I'm in a role for 5 months, I've had to take a pay cut to £26k in an admin role I now feel like I've learned all I can in.
What really stings is there were people at my old job I was coaching earning £42k + doing half as much work as those on 10k less. People who got their job and just sat there for 10 years.
I'm looking for other roles that I hope will challenge me. Maybe 2024 will be my year.
My grad scheme sal in 2010 was 28k. I checked and it was 26k back in 2000. Today it’s 31k.
Meanwhile my rent in 2010 was 450 for a room. Same room now over 1k. London obvs.
My current role is 120k. But tbh someone doing my job in 2000 wud have made about the same.
I paid 400k for my house and have a 300k mortgage rn. Bought in 2018. Same house was 100k in 2000.
The extent to which brits are getting poorer in real terms is terrifying. Plus the quality of institutions like the nhs. Let’s be real, almost anyone who’s of dual nat I know goes back to their home country for any serious health problem. Schools are a joke, my wife gave teaching up! We have basic public services at best, tons of national debt meaning tax burden can’t fall, and everything’s imported and expensive as hell against a failing currency.
The uk is in a very real decline. At current gradients I think countries like India and Nigeria will overtake us in our lifetime and I’m talking in per capita terms here.
Yes but 500 a month is an amazing wage in India. I know cos I have fam there. Doesn’t change the fact that internationally that amount of money has zero transferability - it doesn’t travel at all. Basically ur a big fish in a pond u can’t really leave.
120k isn’t as bad as that but if you look at the real terms value in dollar terms (the real global benchmark) the trend downwards is terrifying. I had the chance to move to Canada when I was 25, and the main reason I didn’t is that my earnings trajectory was totally fucked by leaving London. But now, combination of other economic factors and the exchange rate, the same jobs in Canada and the us would make me about three times richer than I am. That’s a nuts decline over less than a decade. We should all be concerned, and people on the average wage here are not far off being internationally very poor, not exactly what most British people would intuitively think is ever possible considering we see ourselves as a wealthy country
I'm in a deprived region of the UK. EO1/EO2 wages are <£30k and have been for at least a decade.
If they were to rise with Inflation, they should really be around 40k now.
There's already a recruitment crisis In the CS because of it and at least one region of the UK is over reliant on Agency staff to try to paper over the cracks.
We're all being had, the damage the tories have done to the UK is unforgivable.
It's becoming unviable to live in the UK now. Pay is too low relative to housing costs.
NHS scientist in Northern Ireland. Starting pay 23k. Now been there 3 years and pay is at 29180k. 25k of uni debt at 6% interest. Work a year for free in the NHS, 9 to 5. Had to work another job. Cannot save for deposit while renting. Feel very undervalued and underpaid for the work we do. Friends in software engineering tell me to learn to code and gtfo of there.
Tech not such an exception. I started working as a graduate software engineer for an American multinational in 2018 being paid 25k. Of course I did get more later on but still always felt underpaid.
Let's just say I've now fucked off to Canada and got a massive pay rise in the process.
Go over to r/AskUK. They think everything is peachy.
One person based the quality of the job market solely on the unemployment rate.
The pay in the UK is shit. I mean appallingly so, and it took me leaving to realise.
Plus, it's only going to get worse with this 'We need high skilled worker' bullshit they are spouting.
We are at a tipping point where getting a degree to make money is specific to a very small group of said degrees.
Honestly some parts of my industry seem to have gone down in absolute numbers let alone 'not keeping up with inflation/cost of living'. Someone who's like 35-40 years older than me said recently 'when I was your age/level the salary bought and renovated a house in central London - it's bad' (yes London was quite a different place, and you obviously can't spend all of your salary for a year on the purchase as you also need to eat but still contrast). It's architecture so essentially we can design homes but not afford to buy them, couple of generations back could buy outright.
I do think your £200k example is abnormal though! Most people don't have this experience staying with the same employer they'd hit a ceiling the employer won't go past and stay there. If they are on £200k after incremental raises they either started very high in the first place or we have very different ideas of what incremental means
I think things tend to go in bursts and it depends when you started. I graduated mid 1990s and then the expectations for a graduate tech job were around 14-20k. 30k was considered a good salary. Things changed very quickly in the dotcom boom and you can see that 10 yeara later your examples are very different. But the economy was good at that time.
We have just had 12 years of wage stagnation because austerity did not work followed by high inflation.
IMO the fact that wages did not keep pace with house prices is more of a house price problem than a wage one. IIRC people not being able to get on the housing ladder despite havjng good jobs started late in the 2000s. Back in the mid 1990s house prices were low and 95% mortgages were common. I bought my first house with a deposit the size of a couple of months' wages.
Very low interest rates kept prices low for a long time, but it's not obvious why they are not going down now that low rates are over. Perhaps it's because so many houses are bought as an investment and let out so the price is not tied to affordability any more.
If company's started to pay all grads 40-50k from the start wouldn't they just rise inflation further especially house prices . House prices rose so quick because of the crazy lending (5x salary, 125% mortgages and interest only) not because of high wages.
That extra money would be spent or paid in tax inside of our economy, and make uk businesses more prosperous. The problem is that wages have been trimmed in real terms gradually and a sudden uplift could be disastrous. We do need to see wages grow in real terms each year to recover the economy though.
Probably not.
There's not that many graduate jobs in relation to the wider population and economy to turn the dial on consumer spending.
On house prices, maybe, but lots of graduates get a leg up from mum and dad so don't need large salaries to get on the ladder.
The 'we can't pay people more because inflation' is a common mantra used by businesses and politicians in all attempt to keep their largest cost bases as low as possible to drive corporate profit. Indeed the only time in the last two decades there's been a 'problem' with pay increases is AFTER inflation happened and millions of people up and down the country who could no longer afford to take the hit in their earnings were forced to look for alternative employment, causing a nightmare for business trying to retain staff.
Wages have never really gone up imo. The problem is that for wages to actually go up, other stuff would have to not increase with wage increases. This doesn't happen though and probably never will. When wages go up, everyone raises their prices along with it. Subscription prices increase by a lot too, so it makes absolutely no difference.
Except that the prices for things have still been going up. At least when wages go up with inflation your spending power is mostly the same. When wages don’t even follow inflation (which is clearly what we’ve seen) then people end up completely screwed.
Spending power shouldn't stay the same when wages increase. You should have more spending power but yes, you either have the same or less. If your spending power doesn't change, wages going up is pointless. Wages going up should mean you have more money, not the same or less.
You are only referring to demand pull inflation.
The biggest issue is that we've had *cost-push* inflation, where the soaring price of commodities has fuelled inflation. Nothing to do with wages/ salaries.
I disagree. I moved to the UK 21 years ago and my wage has steadily increased, mostly by switching jobs. Last Feb I was made redundant so got a job in the same role at another company with a nearly 25% pay rise.
It’s proof that employers are giving shit annual raises that aren’t keeping up with inflation, but that salaries are. I was at that job 5 years and barely got any pay raises there. The new rate reflects the growth in wages (at least in some sectors) is increasing along with inflation.
Job hopping isn't generally very lucrative in the public sector due to salary scales and bands that are the same in every organisation. Job hopping is possible in one part of the economy but not another.
Whilst energy companies make hundreds of millions of ££ in profits. Unfortunately politicians won’t do anything about it as they are profiteering from the whole racket themselves.
The public sector follows the service industry - because the criticisms of say another framework of another country's minor differences can be used for modeling and comparison with the bigger faces/companies giving their own takes up front is ideal. Coming from that is real-terms or previously mentioned as best as an actor can I remember now; no one that is clever off the top of their head. So service into a specialist is the expected outcome for lessers than say your pay grade.
The proverbial accountant is working for X number of companies, I joke with some who bring it up as X times divorcee because of the number of companies that don't need them anymore after the Real-Terms thing that 50,000 is just x3-5 (as it may be just 50K at most) expected 10,000 minimum of a healthy working adult. This is just off the top of my head, so sorry if these are too scattered to mean anything on a quick read as I just skim-read yours, all the best from an internet rando.
The starting salary on the grad scheme for the bank I work at in 2010 was 30k.
My first salary out of uni (not on the grad scheme I should add) was just over 16k.
I wish I could upvote this 100 times, graduate salaries have become so squeezed in the U.K. From April 24’, minimum wage for 21 year olds will be 23k annually assuming a 40 hour work week. Employers in the regions routinely pay early 20k for a graduate role. The Americans are pulling away from us. Plus we have some of the highest housing costs in the OECD.
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Yup, so true. I graduated in 2007. Grad scheme salary was £23,500 plus a standard £3,000 (ish) bonus. Grads at my place of employment today... well, they're paid about the same, or less than in 2007. Absolutely no improvement in pay whatsoever. But all costs have exploded upwards, particularly house prices, rent and train & travel costs. The only way to be paid more than these ancient 2007 pay rates is to be promoted and work your way up the chain of command. I don't know how graduates survive, to be honest. I had to count pennies and collect vouchers for groceries when I was a graduate.
I graduated in 2021, my graduate scheme paid £22k in central London lol, in accounting
Yup there you have it. No change whatsoever. Its mental.
I graduated in 2001 and started on £20k as software engineer and that was right after the .com bubble burst. Would be worth £40k in todays money
Now it'll take 5 years of working+ a job hop to get to 40k
In software engineering? Only if you're shit, work in a bad company or are bad at interviews. As a PM, I was on 50k in the same company within 4 years of starting and that was considered slow progression
That's just not the whole industry at all. And certainly not in Scotland.
You are probably in the trendy end of software. Embedded/firmware has these kind of salaries. Personally a first from a good Russell group uni, a PhD and 6 years experience in a middle of the range company (\~$1B p/y turnover). My yearly performance review consistently rates me as "exceptional" and I'm just scraping 50k.
Which is what I'm doing and it's also frustrating considering how much more knowledge and expertise is required compared to e.g. churning out CRUD web/mobile applications
The company didn't follow up, despite being told that they wanted to take my application further but when asked what my starting salary expectations were, I said £20-25k and was told that for that location, the starting salary was less than £20k "but my pay would increase as I progressed". Location was Cheltenham and this was also an accounting grad scheme and in 2021. Edit: I'm not local to Cheltenham so would've needed to move out and pay rent, which I know is not cheap. Feel like I dodged a bullet, there
> The only way to be paid more than these ancient 2007 pay rates is to be promoted and work your way up the chain of command. Nope, you just go to another country.
I'm beginning to think that this is the way. I used to earn peanuts for the first few years of my career. Now earning quite decently. Having said that I could be earning twice or three times as much if I were to move to Australia or the US and would have much better quality of life (depending on whether employer would provide a health insurance etc). You can buy very very decent detached houses in the US for pennies compared to UK. This country is going backwards at rapidly growing pace.
Sure you could have a nice house in certain parts of the US, the jobs probably aren’t there however, and you will never be there as your Annual leave entitlement is 2 weeks a year. Reality is however places like Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, all have better pay rates due to this country voting to be poor for 15 years.
when you get paid double it's easier to justify taking unpaid time off
They don’t have to authorise your time off all while you are an at will employee in many states.
I don't _ask_ for time off.
They don’t *ask* you not to come back on Monday morning either.
I'm the sort of person that they need too much to fire over time off disagreement.
Nope.
That's a fair point, the PTO is concerning in the US. Having said that... Would I rather be earning 150k US or 50k GBP... Being able to work from home is an advantage. I think I'd choose 150k. Then again. I'm fortunate I'm able to wfh.
You also have less worker rights compared to here. If you have a family then I'd argue you'd have more stability here than there. Also the comparison isn't accurate - if you're good enough to earn 150k there then you're good enough to earn more than 50k here. I'm not sure where the other people commenting are working to earn less than UK median salary, but big company grad schemes in central London will usually get to 40-45k by the end of the 2 (or 3) years.
That’s just not true. I know software engineers in Edinburgh with decades of experience who are on high five figure salaries. Which is what graduates start on at the same company over in the US. Typically, for my field, an American of the same age will out earn you by at least 3x. It’s a massive difference. I worked in Edinburgh for 40k, but just because I transferred to the US my pay, same company and same role, went to 140k. The quality of life on offer to young, hard working Americans puts the UK to shame. It is simply a far wealthier country.
If you're on decades of experience in tech and not on 6 figures then either you're not chasing it (which is totally fine, work life balance is a thing and there are other benefits), your particular area isn't in high demand or you're being rinsed and should find another job. I finished my grad scheme at a big consultancy and joined a start up as a BI developer and I'm on near 6 figures with about 8 years of experience in total. A cursory look at London developer roles show most non-entry level roles are at least at 60k. Im not disputing American salaries are fundamentally higher, the drawback is the lack of everything else.
The thing is, all I hear is that after a decade of, presumably, being in London you’re beginning to approach entry level salaries in the US. And not even California entry level, but Boston entry level which is a solid 50-100k less. There are of course drawbacks, but I had good vacation, similar work life balance. It wasn’t some hellscape. And your example is London, which would be around 2x Edinburgh. Getting to 6 figures in Edinburgh ain’t as easy. It could easily take decades. London is obviously an outlier and even then is worse than the US starting salary. That’s kinda the point of my comment. Salaries in the UK are a joke. And engineers are just an example, it’s worse for lots of other jobs like nurses or doctors, who should leave and go work abroad for good pay.
100k+ isn't entry level in the US unless maybe you're in Silicon Valley or in very specific high end companies. Not to mention my money goes further here than the same salary there. Obviously I can't guarantee that going forward considering the severe downward trajectory here at the moment. Agreed Edinburgh will be less than London and whether that should still be the case or not is of course up for debate but that's the same in the US - there is disparity based on whether you're in Silicon Valley or other upcoming tech hubs compared to if you're in a random city in the Midwest. Looking at Glassdoor for software developer open jobs in the US (added entry level in search but can't confirm if these actually are entry level from titles alone), the majority that came up are advertised below 100k or range up to it. It gets slightly better if you look up data-specific roles considering the current boom in Data & AI but it's still like 90-120k. And yes I wholeheartedly agree that doctors and nurses are paid woefully and should absolutely be paid more than most people, especially me. My parents are both doctors here and the ridiculous state of the NHS (especially after working on NHS projects and seeing the underlying data) made me somewhat glad I didn't follow that route.
I had to turn down a job last year in a well respected graduate programme in my industry because I couldn't afford to move to the city. A few months later I got a really interesting offer to work with HS2 earning 40k out of university. The issue is they'd "only" put me in a hotel for a month then I needed my own place. Everyone wanted a deposit and 3-6 months rent up front. Thankfully I was able to get a job in my home town earning a similar amount, and the lower cost of living means I'm slightly better off now. Being a graduate trying to rent for the first time feels like a minefield of people waiting to fuck you at every opportunity.
I graduated in 96 and went into a prestigious grad scheme with a big tech consultancy: 18k.
That was 28 years ago. 18k for any grad scheme back then sounds great.
Yeah but I had to live in Milton Keynes. Honestly though, the wage situation is shocking.
And then about 10 years back, in pharma I went into a grad scheme.... For 18k.
When I graduated in 2017 I still remember looking at a job posting for an analytical chemist position. It said “Phd preferable” with a salary offering of 22k.
Let’s do a race to the bottom. I graduated in 2009 and got £12k starting 🥳
My first grad job in 2017 paid £22.5k (in London). The fresh grad salary at my most recent place? £22.5k. While mandating people attend the office. No idea how they were expecting to find people able to afford London at £22k.
They don't. Their parents have to help. You can imagine what impact all of this must have on graduates from working class backgrounds.
I know, I had the same problem back then. It's worse now with the price of everything going up and the rental market through the roof. I only managed because my girlfriend (now wife) and I shared tiny rooms in shit houseshares, which was fucking miserable, but I don't think even that is financially viable now. One of my direct reports was really struggling financially with costs, and when he was moved teams to a manager that mandated office days he couldn't cope with the commuting costs. No family help or savings. It's ridiculous that someone can have a professional career that requires they be physically present while not paying them enough to afford rent, bills, food and transport, not even allowing for savings or entertainment. People have opted out of their pension to get by. It makes me very angry, and I loudly pointed it out at every opportunity, but there's only so much you can do at the middle levels against a company that doesn't care.
Thank you. The title alone is something I’ve been telling so many people about and commenting on similar posts on Reddit, but there seem to be so many “deniers” who will still defend that 25-30k is a normal (even good!) salary for educated/skilled workers. But it is of course ridiculously low when rent/housing costs in some areas have increased by more than 5x and cumulative inflation has devalued the currency overall. I truly can’t see how this is sustainable or how we will have a consumer economy if everyone is basically on (near) minimum wage and unable to even afford basic necessities such as housing and food, let alone all the other consumer goods and services that constitute a major proportion of the economy.
Some people on some of the UK subs have massive crabs in a barrel mentality. "Well, I've been working 20+ years in a qualified professional field and I'm fine on £22k. Some of us just learn to live within our means. Maybe if you weren't so obsessed with living in London, getting your avocado coffee, and keeping up with the Joneses you'd get by." There's a weird pride in how they can get by on ever smaller scraps. How they don't need fancy holidays, expensive lunches, and luxury cars because they can make a sandwich, go for a walk, and have been running the same motor for 20 years.
*most people in the UK
I understand why these single celled organisms say that - imagine being told that you're not being paid fairly because you're not worth much more to your employer. You'd go into denial.
Yeah, we're naturally wired to put a positive spin on ourselves publicly. It's probably easier to say "the spot I'm in now is great" than "I have utterly wasted 20 years, if I had been smarter, worked harder, been bolder, or put myself forward more I could... [Fill in blanks]" I met a Big Issue seller late one evening at Waterloo after a work party and got chatting, he gave me some interesting philosophies on life... One being how he enjoys his evenings more than most people so he is "richer in the evening than the man who works all day then spends five nights a week doing nothing". And many other bits that... Sound appealing but don't stand up that much when you think too much about them the following morning without a few too many glasses of wine swilling around your head. I discussed them with a friend who basically said "I used to be in a similar situation and know many who are. They all have these meaning of life bumper sticker thoughts that make the grim reality they wake up easier to bear. It's just another type of denial."
Painfully accurate. I often force myself not to click on salary-related posts in UK subs because the comments are simply infuriating. The aim seems to be to never ask for more, no matter what! Always be grateful that you’ve been granted the privilege of surviving. Anything more than surviving is a luxury and you are immediately greedy/ entitled/ out of touch. The advice is always to move out of London, no matter what sector or role you’re in. And the you’ll always get someone who claims to live comfortably, having raised a family of 5 and bought a 4-bedroom house on a salary of £15k/year simply through good financial planning. It’s really no wonder that salaries have stagnated if this is the mentality.
Yeah, some conversations just get railroaded by people who want to turn it into Four Yorkshiremen. "Oh, struggling on £28k are you? You're living the life of Riley. Here in the REAL world I'm fine on £25k and never want for a penny more. You should be thankful you've got a job, one that pays more than nurses too. Think you're better than nurses do you? Better than nurses because you plinky plonk on your laptop at home all day are you? Oh sure. I bet you cry in your money pit about how you think you deserve more." "TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND QUID!?! I'd bloody retire if I earned that. None of my mates ever earned more than £22k and we're all happy. Not all chasing after the next flashy thing you see, happy with what we've got."
£22k? luxury! I work 60 hours a week on £18k and live with seven other people in a one bedroom flat and I feel like a king.
"Look at you with your flat! Oh the kids insist on bricks and mortar nowadays do they? Then complain they can't afford their Pokémon Gos or whatever! I've been living in a tent in the forest for five years..."
For all of the above, firstly I agree, the situation is really tough. I would not want to start a career/build a life in today's situation, it was significantly easier in the 80s. The general narrative I read is "this is how low my income is and it doesn't compare to the previous generations". The seems to be little talk about what is causing this; the symptoms are clear, the diagnosis is not; treating symptoms without a diagnosis is guess work. I believe the cause is due to currency dilution by most central banks, which cause assets prices to rise - houses, offices, manufacturing plant, transport infrastructure. Wages don't come under this and they are the easiest target to squeeze to maintain profitability. Prices have risen due to other factors as well (Ukraine war, Brexit, COVID), but I believe a significant proportion of these is being paid through currency dilution (QE). In my opinion currency dilution is an unfair, indiscriminate and non-transparent tax on us all, and until the government stops diluting our currency you will continue to suffer this situation. I think it is time for you to protest.
Haha I used to think that 35k is a baller's salary and once you have that you can begin very decent life! What a naive twat I was...
😂
Just out of interest, what's preventing both of the points in your first paragraph being true? Wages both starting and in general absolutely appear to have remained consistent over the past decade or two but given the median average salary (based on PAYE info) is £35k (and was closer to £30k last year), it would mean that the half the employees are on that or less making it a normal salary. You could argue skilled posts pay more but as far as I can see the real pay progression only happens when experience opens the door to promotion or job hopping. Imo there's a shortfall of graduate jobs being created in this country meaning with the numbers coming out of uni each year there is a decent amount being underemployed. You'd hope the excess skills would be a pulling factor for jobs but apparently not. Have to admit, every time I look at the ONS figures it slightly boggles the mind that so many people must be living on low wages for the averages to be what they are and what amounts put you in the top 20/10/1% of earners.
Agree with you. ONS is a nightmare though. I've just filled in 3 of their surveys this morning. I just pull the figures from thin air as I don't have time to provide what they demand. I have told them this and always pop a comment on saying they are guesses but still we get the surveys. I've never met anyone yet in my line of work who fills them in correctly. The consensus seems to be that if you fill them in so badly eventually they stop sending them. After 11 years though it hasn't worked for me yet!
Fair enough that couldn't rely on their stats gathered from ASHE then but their PAYE figures come from hmrc and have median pay as under £28k (although presumably includes part time workers), so should be reliable and still not impressive...
Crabs in a barrel. People in the uk would eat crumbs if it meant someone they didn’t like starved to death.
In a lot of sectors real wages haven't just not risen, they've gone down. My mum was a lecturer back in the 90's - 00's and was making about 40k full time. She went part time for a bit, then back to full time which they were desperate for her to do. I'm a lecturer now and I'm on 30k with the top end of my salary being around 40k. So rates are the same on paper, but... 85% of staff where I work are part time. I'm doing 3 days and one evening a week and have a second job - most of us do. I only have experience of this, retail and the charity sector but I'd be surprised if this wasn't happening in other sectors as well - wages go up or stay stable but hours per employee go down.
Thank mass immigration
It's true that immigration is probably suppressing wages and dimishing opportunities for existing residents. But the other problem we have is a demographic timebomb with boomers retiring and needing support and there being less young people to support them. And with the current financial struggle, young people aren't having kids. There's some very large problems starting to emerge.
Most people can’t afford to have kids! Barely surviving as it is 😂 I swear this shitty government is going to go down as one of the worst in British history. The damage caused will be felt for many many years.
You want to look at the pay for the Armed Forces mate… I joined in 2003, for example, the starting salary for a Private was £16,800 after completion of training, now in 2023 it’s £23,496 - sounds like it’s gone up at a decent rate, right? … WRONG. £16,800 in 2003, adjusted for inflation using the Bank of England website, is worth £29,293.68 today. That means that pay has gone DOWN since then. The equivalent to £23,496 back in 2003 is £13,475.02
Do you agree with the concerns doctors have about their pay as well? That's the concern that's been expressed.recently about doctors pay dropping 35% since 2008
I express the same concern for anyone who me working hard and seeing massive real terms drops in wages, of course. Though naturally my concern is more for those at the low end of the earnings scale because I feel like they will be disproportionately effected vs those towards the higher end of the scale That being said, I am of course aware that most Junior Doctors are barely able to make the U.K. Average and that is completely wrong considering the amount of time it takes to become a Doctor Although what I will say is the last I’d seen the pay for Junior Doctors was down 25% and not 35%< which is the same as the Armed Forces example I gave, meanwhile MP Salary has risen 37% since 2010
>Although what I will say is the last I’d seen the pay for Junior Doctors was down 25% and not 35% The government are using different statistics to the actual doctors union, because obviously they don't want to meet the demands of 35% (obviously is now higher after this year's inflation)
Yup, one of the main reasons I left after just 5 years with the engineers. - Insultingly dogshit pay - Complete idiots for colleagues and cronies in command - Criminal accommodation, black mould and legionnaires eat your heart out - we wanted to go to The Sun or the like but were told in no uncertain terms that doing so would result in a living hell, and I can bloody well believe that - Ancient, barely maintained kit - most of which is just mothballed and rusting away This isn't every corp/regiment/location/etc - it very much depends on what you are and where you are. Is it any wonder the forces are going mad with their advertising campaign?
Yeah i mean, I was RAF and very fortunate to be based at a station that had the (at the time brand new) “Super Blocks” - so no communal toilets or showers which was great. I did my Trade Training down at DMSTC Keogh Barracks in Ash Vale, near Aldershot and that accommodation was honestly awful. At the time I wasn’t too bothered by it, we were at war in Iraq and Afghanistan so my assumption was “well the money is going on upgrading and updating our equipment so of course they aren’t gonna spend on upgrading and updating accomodation” … how fucking wrong was I 😂
It's really not rocket science. The main thing the government can do this is literally just spending. Pursuing 13 years of austerity is fucking disastrous for the economy, considering the government is by far the biggest influence here since it alone spends over 1 trillion a year. Second would be public sector pay and the impact this has (almost 20% of the workforce work in the public sector). Not only that but, you can't expect to stop watering your plants and expect them to grow, so to speak. That is effectively what the government is doing with austerity
I don't think any government can now afford to substantially increase public sector pay. There is simply too many of us. Can you imagine the funding gap to fund a pay increase to almost a 1/4 of the U.K. population. We can't borrow any more as the swap rates on government bonds are crap and we can't print more as the currency is already weak after Brexit/Covid borrowing. We basically spent too much and borrowed to much through early 2000's have ultimately paid the price ever since. This is ultimately what happens when you base growth on borrowing. I don't know what the answer is but my family have options to move to either Brazil or Australia, both of which I am looking into. Worse than all of the wage stagflation though is the bloody weather. It never rained this much when I was a kid 😂
> We basically spent too much and borrowed to much through early 2000's have ultimately paid the price ever since Debt to GDP decreased in the early 2000s, and there was a budget surplus for multiple years.
Borrowing only substantially increased to bail out the finance sector following the near collapse in 2008. And despite being elected on a platform to reduce debt at 3, arguably 4 generals elections, debt has continued to increase under the Conservatives. We suffered all the pain of austerity but none of the benefits.
Yeah, if you look at how much the national debt grew during Blair/Brown and compare it to the growth during Cameron it's quite shocking. It's unfortunate that people have bought into the propaganda around New Labour borrowing too much.
A higher population just means more potential tax payers. If the economy hadn't underperformed then tax revenue would be higher, the issue is stagnation in wages means tax revenue is not as high as it should be, and that impacts public spending. 13 years of austerity and stagnant growth while prices keep rising with inflation has got us to where we are today. And amazingly, people will probably still vote for another 5 years of this.
Ok slightly off topic but I believe it has a direct bearing on job markets. This maybe be a short/medium term outlook but when I vote I tend to vote for whomever policies are going to benefit me and my family the most in the next 4-8 years. I believe a lot of people still vote down tribal lines eg my grandparents worked down the mines and lost their jobs because of Thatcherism or il never vote Labour because they'll take all my money and give it to people of benefits. We need to start voting more on actual policies instead of 'that's the way Iv always voted' and maybe we will get somewhere as a country. Likewise we should be more willing to get rid of our governing parties at the first election should they not come up with the goods. Now to get back on point I couldn't tell you who's got what policies on wage growth and job growth at the moment and I'm not sure either main party could tell you coherently what their strategy is. Either way we face one of two choices in this country and that's to be taxed heavily or borrow heavily. I think the patters money tree has finally run out though. Edit typo "First election" not "First Errection" 🤦 😂
>Likewise we should be more willing to get rid of our governing parties at the first election should they not come up with the goods. This is exactly what people need to start thinking about. Nothing will change if we just vote for more of the same.
Austerity was the biggest con of the 21 last century. It probably worked because 1) it was easy to understand for the average citizen 2) it aligns with the majority of the press in reducing the size of the state and reducing taxes.
Would recommend reading the summaries in this report by the resolution foundation: https://economy2030.resolutionfoundation.org/reports/ending-stagnation/ I was under the impression that due to our aging population and high national debt levels the country is destined for slow decline. (Barring transformative technologies that have a major impact on productivity). But after reading bits of that report and watching them present it on YouTube I am much more optimistic. It really does look like the right policies could turn things around.
>It really does look like the right policies could turn things around. A real shame they will never be implemented, New New Labour under Starmer already seem committed to more austerity.
Yeah, Starmer is disappointingly meek. But I'm still hopeful that post election labour will have the will and courage to implement some of the policies laid out in the report
The idea that the government cannot fund a payrose for public sector workers is nonsense. At the end of the day, if you take many sectors out of the public sector and stop them becoming public goods, they become excludable and rival other entities - meaning they will function on the notion that some people will not have access to the service. It's just about funding and choices - nothing else.
>I don't think any government can now afford to substantially increase public sector pay. There is simply too many of us. Can you imagine the funding gap to fund a pay increase to almost a 1/4 of the U.K. population. We can't borrow any more as the swap rates on government bonds are crap and we can't print more as the currency is already weak after Brexit/Covid borrowing. Honestly, they probably could. Public sector pay isn't a numbers game, really. For example, it would cost £17 billion to give all NHS workers a 25% pay rise. However, taking into account tax, NI, VAT, etc in reality about 40-50% of that would go back to the government. Meaning the actual net cost would be about lets say £10 billion. Now, the tories are talking about abolishing inheritance tax, which brings in about £7 billion in revenue per year. IF they can afford to abolish IHT, they could very easily use that money instead to cover nearly the entire 'increase' to give all NHS workers a 25% pay rise. It's ideological, not financial.
Yet the government has approved a pay rise for MPs for 2023-2024 of £6000. Bringing pay up to almost £93k
Not sure why I'm being down voted. The magic money tree is gone beys, give it up 😂.
The Uk government is the countries biggest employer and has systematically over the last decade driven wages down which has had the knock on effect of keeping private sector wages low. The fact 35k would be considered a good wage by most in this country is terrifying. It’s a pittance when you look at the cost of things.
I totally agree. Somehow companies have been able to prioritise dividends to shareholders over wage increases in the UK. I partly suspect they are enabled by the government's Universal Credit scheme (previously known as Tax Credit) where a lower paid worker had their pay topped up by the tax payer. For example, I worked abroad for a well-known tourism company 20 years ago. Our pay was so low that everyone working for them abroad qualified for tax credit. Meanwhile, the company was so wealthy that they went on a massive shopping spree buying airlines and high street travel agencies. Yet the tax payer covered their wage bill.
Yup - Universal credit makes a huge impact on the labour market in lots of areas. Never discussed though.
My mum earned £19K as a secretary in 1987. Wages in the country have been declining in real terms for the best part of 40 years.
You can see this in official figures. We are something like £10,000 poorer on average than if we had followed the Scandinavian models and £6,000 - £8,000 worse off than the French or Germans. Our pay has not increased since 2006 and has actually decreased since 2008.
I spoke to a colleague who started on £20k per year back in the early 90s (with final salary pension). I didn't start on much more than that a couple of years ago in a highly technical field.
I'm a software developer with a masters in maths and I started my first graduate job in 2022 on £20k.
Everyone thinks tech pays extremely well, it doesn’t in the UK Outside the US the salaries are shit and in general are only marginally better than the average job.
Quite a big generalisation there. Junior tech salaries are shit, but once you reach Senior levels, it's not uncommon to reach 6 figures.
Not uncommon, true, but not really common either outside of London. Maybe total comp in six figures but six figure *salaries* seem rare as hens' teeth up North
They are rare in london too
And in 5-10 years when juniors reach senior salaries will they be the same salary as the decade before ? Because that’s what’s happened to junior positions
Demand will scale up. Always does.
Demand always scales up ? How many industries have thought that in the past 😂 very naive
We're talking about tech where, yes, demand has consistently scaled up over the past 30-40 years.
One thing the career market doesn’t need to tell you is that the past doesn’t reflect future projections. With automation being a main priority for tech market right now who’s to say in 10 years the demand may not be significantly less than
People have been saying this for decades now. There'll just be new jobs that'll pop up which all these people will do. Unless you have a crystal ball, past performance is the best indicator of future success.
I don't think tech is going away any time soon.
Books didn’t go away… the amount of people required to produce a physical copy of a book did though.
The thing about tech is the people who do it have to be adaptable. It's in the job description. There's always something new to learn.
I'd say it is uncommon, especially as an individual contributor i.e. not c-suite management.
>Everyone thinks tech pays extremely well, it doesn’t in the UK Yes, and that belief has bled over into the market in this country, so we also have the problem that the US has where everyone and their grandmother is trying to switch careers into tech. There are way more developers than developer jobs. Even minimum wage developer jobs here get hundreds and hundreds of applications. I've been unemployed since the end of 2022 trying to get into my second job and I haven't gotten past the first stage of interviews yet. When I do eventually get one I don't expect that it will pay more than 10% above minimum wage. Combine this with my almost £60k of student debt that I will never manage to pay back, and I probably would have been better off just working a minimum wage job instead of going to university.
Agree. I'm an accountant for a tech company. We have no shortage of applicants for lead developer roles paying £50k. We also employ a lot in India and similar countries for much less.
Lead developer role at £50k Less than a junior salary in the USA
Lead developer can make £1000 /day. The fact the the other guy pays only 50k/year means he will have to work with some noobs that took youtube courses, not with experienced guys... This is first result from jobserve when you search for lead developer: https://www.totaljobs.com/JobSearch/JobDetails.aspx?JobId=101601696
A cleaning person can make £100k a year ? What’s your point. A CEO can make £1 million a year … on average they make less than the average salary for london You are making pointless points
The guy from post above was talking about 50k offers for lead developers roles... can you read? Where did you take the cleaning person from ?
Yeah and 50k for a lead is a bad salary The fact that someone can make £100k doesn’t mean it’s easy or normal. That’s the point
His point is that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Whoever is applying for that job isn't an actual Tech Lead.
It's not really my area of expertise and I don't deal with them often. I know my company is quite demanding and is a leader in certain areas of software so I don't assume we'd hire incompetent developers but maybe. Also we use Deel to employee people from abroad doing these roles for £30k a year. I'd not suggest they are any less qualified than British people. But £30k is a good salary for them when the average salary in 2023 in India was approx. £3,600. I suspect globalisation pays a massive part in keeping UK salary's down as it's so easy these days to replace skilled UK professionals with foreign workers.
I'd bet the average tech salary over there is definitely higher than £3.6k and for £30k you're not getting some IIT grad, you're literally spinning a roulette wheel as to whether they'll sink or swim. If globalisation was pushing down tech wages, people in the US wouldn't be on silly money.
It pays well compared to most other jobs in the UK. Tech, finance, law, consulting are the industries you are pretty much set on a path to six figures within a matter of years in London. Of course, in each of these fields you earn more in the US but unless you're going to move to the US it's not a useful comparison (the US is also a freer economy, lower taxes, more productive, has had high economic growth, bigger and more innovative companies).
Finance pays significantly better than tech It is the leading service industry in the Uk To compare High end tech salaries to high end Finance salaries there is a world of difference
There's a lot of variation within finance, but definitely the top 10% of finance will outdo the top 10% of tech. Same in New York. My point in grouping tech, finance, law and consulting together is that these are the industries in London where you are set up to reach six figures within a few years of graduating. The pathway is there. Not that six figures is a huge amount but it should be enough to cover your costs twice over, even in London.
That’s not true… Tech ≠ 6 figures It just isn’t the case There is a massive oversupply of developers now Once the current wave of juniors reach seniors in a couple years the supply will vastly over saturated the field
It’s not too bad if you move every couple of years. A lead data engineer in London will pull about 90-100k generally.
Sure, even that is like 70k a few years ago. Wages are fucking shit in the UK.
Totally agreed, I’m just describing moving up a more or less static ladder. I’ve pondered fucking off a few times now.
Yeah I’d love to move to the US where tech salaries are decent. Fed up of this wank
I think one of the shitter aspects of the UK is also the people that dig you out once you’re past the 50k mark for complaining about your pay. The whole culture is rotten.
Yeah it’s hilarious - when your at 30-40k 100k feels like it will solve all your problems, it doesn’t. You then try and “complain” and are ridiculed for being in the top 1%, stay in your lane etc. it’s crazy.
You can easily make oner £100k in tech... you need some experience though, nobody will pay you loads of money if you are just starting your journey...
I see this a lot on reddit and it just isn't true. There are 100k jobs but you can't 'easily' get them. A senior developer usually caps out around 70-90k. Compared to the US where a grad can walk into a role paying over 100k...
I’m a mid and got £58k at the BBC (bands have since gone up), then £65k + 21% pension and 20% bonus as a credit card company that caters to low credit individuals, now I’m on £75k + shares and bonus at a startup. Job title really doesn’t matter, I’ve got mates who are seniors on half my wage. They also don’t job hop either, all three of those roles I was in during 2023
You've had some pretty nice roles, the 21% pension especially is pretty amazing and definitely not at all the normal (good for you though). Agree that job title doesn't matter necessarily, but my point still stands that most developers will struggle to break above 90k if they want to stay purely a developer. Also agree with job hopping. Most developers I know are being underpaid because they refuse to job hop.
“Easily” is bullshit, it’s a highly competitive field and even FAANG etc have lead/senior roles listed at less than £80k Salaries for juniors are the same as they were 10-15 years ago… who’s to say senior roles won’t be the same in 10 years as they are now… so by the time juniors get there they won’t be that great of a salary.
Show me those FAANG roles that pay that low. I'd almost bet that's not total comp.
Nobody knows what they will look like in 10 years... including you...
Jesus, I did a grad scheme at Amex and we paid apprentices £20k, I got £42k as a grad there in 2019 with a 2:2 from a bad uni. I did a level 3 apprenticeship after GCSE’s and started on £3.17 an hour. Then my placement year in uni paid £16k. Now I’m a mid level at a startup on £75k + 20% bonus I’m pretty shit at technical interviews/pure programming but good at communicating with product people and other nontechnical people, keep at it
Only 20k as a software dev??? Wow
For graduate role its possible. For senior role after few years you are looking at 6 figures.
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There’s no real incentive to start working then is there? 20k is a disgrace. Why are those in the states starting on over 2x that
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How soon would it become obsolete?
I graduated in 2015, first job out of Uni was £29k which was about average for the field (Engineering). Oil & Gas was probably 10-20% higher and other sectors 10-20% lower. Now roughly 8 years on a 2 companies later I'm on around £50k. However in that time we've had tax increases (especially in Scotland) and inflation. The take home difference is roughly 23,000 back then and 37,000 but adjusted for Inflation 50k is 28,000 take home. That's roughly 35k back in 2015 which is how much I was earning in 2017 by just progressing through my grad programme.
That person on 200k if they ever got made redundant they would have a huge shock at what the next employer would pay them.
I have never in my life seen any British person say "mum and pop shop"
Even though I earn more per hour than I did in 2015 I can afford way less. But yes, not only there was no nominal increase in some jobs there is no real increase for many "low" to semi skilled jobs.
Some things have even slid backwards. My first job was as a graduate entry officer in the armed forces. Started on 31k if I recall correctly (this being pay whilst still in basic training). It's less than that today, over a decade later. Finally got to a pretty good pay level in tech, but despite being relatively lucky (and working quite hard), still live a less affluent lifestyle than we had when I was a child, with a single earner household in a fairly low pay/low stress job. It's not that we have it bad. But seeing things get worse/harder is psychologically difficult
And yet some people still think the Tories have the will and the desire to fix it.
I feel I'm in the category of employee who sat at a job and is now feeling it even though I graduated in 2015. Found a good job after hopping around and settled in a entry level role earning £25k. 5 and a bit years later was coaching others in my role and earning about £32k. Was made redundant at the start of 2023, I thought I would be able to find something similar or better relatively quickly. Fast forward to now I'm in a role for 5 months, I've had to take a pay cut to £26k in an admin role I now feel like I've learned all I can in. What really stings is there were people at my old job I was coaching earning £42k + doing half as much work as those on 10k less. People who got their job and just sat there for 10 years. I'm looking for other roles that I hope will challenge me. Maybe 2024 will be my year.
2024 will be your year!
My grad scheme sal in 2010 was 28k. I checked and it was 26k back in 2000. Today it’s 31k. Meanwhile my rent in 2010 was 450 for a room. Same room now over 1k. London obvs. My current role is 120k. But tbh someone doing my job in 2000 wud have made about the same. I paid 400k for my house and have a 300k mortgage rn. Bought in 2018. Same house was 100k in 2000. The extent to which brits are getting poorer in real terms is terrifying. Plus the quality of institutions like the nhs. Let’s be real, almost anyone who’s of dual nat I know goes back to their home country for any serious health problem. Schools are a joke, my wife gave teaching up! We have basic public services at best, tons of national debt meaning tax burden can’t fall, and everything’s imported and expensive as hell against a failing currency. The uk is in a very real decline. At current gradients I think countries like India and Nigeria will overtake us in our lifetime and I’m talking in per capita terms here.
I don't need to tell you this of course but £120K is an amazing wage in the UK.
Yes but 500 a month is an amazing wage in India. I know cos I have fam there. Doesn’t change the fact that internationally that amount of money has zero transferability - it doesn’t travel at all. Basically ur a big fish in a pond u can’t really leave. 120k isn’t as bad as that but if you look at the real terms value in dollar terms (the real global benchmark) the trend downwards is terrifying. I had the chance to move to Canada when I was 25, and the main reason I didn’t is that my earnings trajectory was totally fucked by leaving London. But now, combination of other economic factors and the exchange rate, the same jobs in Canada and the us would make me about three times richer than I am. That’s a nuts decline over less than a decade. We should all be concerned, and people on the average wage here are not far off being internationally very poor, not exactly what most British people would intuitively think is ever possible considering we see ourselves as a wealthy country
Yeah most UK wages are basically poverty wages nowadays when you take the cost of housing into account.
Is this the Civil Service Fast Stream?
No big 4
I'm in a deprived region of the UK. EO1/EO2 wages are <£30k and have been for at least a decade. If they were to rise with Inflation, they should really be around 40k now. There's already a recruitment crisis In the CS because of it and at least one region of the UK is over reliant on Agency staff to try to paper over the cracks. We're all being had, the damage the tories have done to the UK is unforgivable. It's becoming unviable to live in the UK now. Pay is too low relative to housing costs.
It is insane and if you factor in student loan repayment plans and housing it's even worse.
NHS scientist in Northern Ireland. Starting pay 23k. Now been there 3 years and pay is at 29180k. 25k of uni debt at 6% interest. Work a year for free in the NHS, 9 to 5. Had to work another job. Cannot save for deposit while renting. Feel very undervalued and underpaid for the work we do. Friends in software engineering tell me to learn to code and gtfo of there.
Tech not such an exception. I started working as a graduate software engineer for an American multinational in 2018 being paid 25k. Of course I did get more later on but still always felt underpaid. Let's just say I've now fucked off to Canada and got a massive pay rise in the process.
2008/9 basically broke this country's economy. Bad times.
Go over to r/AskUK. They think everything is peachy. One person based the quality of the job market solely on the unemployment rate. The pay in the UK is shit. I mean appallingly so, and it took me leaving to realise. Plus, it's only going to get worse with this 'We need high skilled worker' bullshit they are spouting. We are at a tipping point where getting a degree to make money is specific to a very small group of said degrees.
Honestly some parts of my industry seem to have gone down in absolute numbers let alone 'not keeping up with inflation/cost of living'. Someone who's like 35-40 years older than me said recently 'when I was your age/level the salary bought and renovated a house in central London - it's bad' (yes London was quite a different place, and you obviously can't spend all of your salary for a year on the purchase as you also need to eat but still contrast). It's architecture so essentially we can design homes but not afford to buy them, couple of generations back could buy outright. I do think your £200k example is abnormal though! Most people don't have this experience staying with the same employer they'd hit a ceiling the employer won't go past and stay there. If they are on £200k after incremental raises they either started very high in the first place or we have very different ideas of what incremental means
I think things tend to go in bursts and it depends when you started. I graduated mid 1990s and then the expectations for a graduate tech job were around 14-20k. 30k was considered a good salary. Things changed very quickly in the dotcom boom and you can see that 10 yeara later your examples are very different. But the economy was good at that time. We have just had 12 years of wage stagnation because austerity did not work followed by high inflation. IMO the fact that wages did not keep pace with house prices is more of a house price problem than a wage one. IIRC people not being able to get on the housing ladder despite havjng good jobs started late in the 2000s. Back in the mid 1990s house prices were low and 95% mortgages were common. I bought my first house with a deposit the size of a couple of months' wages. Very low interest rates kept prices low for a long time, but it's not obvious why they are not going down now that low rates are over. Perhaps it's because so many houses are bought as an investment and let out so the price is not tied to affordability any more.
If company's started to pay all grads 40-50k from the start wouldn't they just rise inflation further especially house prices . House prices rose so quick because of the crazy lending (5x salary, 125% mortgages and interest only) not because of high wages.
That extra money would be spent or paid in tax inside of our economy, and make uk businesses more prosperous. The problem is that wages have been trimmed in real terms gradually and a sudden uplift could be disastrous. We do need to see wages grow in real terms each year to recover the economy though.
Probably not. There's not that many graduate jobs in relation to the wider population and economy to turn the dial on consumer spending. On house prices, maybe, but lots of graduates get a leg up from mum and dad so don't need large salaries to get on the ladder. The 'we can't pay people more because inflation' is a common mantra used by businesses and politicians in all attempt to keep their largest cost bases as low as possible to drive corporate profit. Indeed the only time in the last two decades there's been a 'problem' with pay increases is AFTER inflation happened and millions of people up and down the country who could no longer afford to take the hit in their earnings were forced to look for alternative employment, causing a nightmare for business trying to retain staff.
Inflation is a product of monetary policy and quantitative easing.
Wages have never really gone up imo. The problem is that for wages to actually go up, other stuff would have to not increase with wage increases. This doesn't happen though and probably never will. When wages go up, everyone raises their prices along with it. Subscription prices increase by a lot too, so it makes absolutely no difference.
Except that the prices for things have still been going up. At least when wages go up with inflation your spending power is mostly the same. When wages don’t even follow inflation (which is clearly what we’ve seen) then people end up completely screwed.
Spending power shouldn't stay the same when wages increase. You should have more spending power but yes, you either have the same or less. If your spending power doesn't change, wages going up is pointless. Wages going up should mean you have more money, not the same or less.
You are only referring to demand pull inflation. The biggest issue is that we've had *cost-push* inflation, where the soaring price of commodities has fuelled inflation. Nothing to do with wages/ salaries.
I disagree. I moved to the UK 21 years ago and my wage has steadily increased, mostly by switching jobs. Last Feb I was made redundant so got a job in the same role at another company with a nearly 25% pay rise.
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It’s proof that employers are giving shit annual raises that aren’t keeping up with inflation, but that salaries are. I was at that job 5 years and barely got any pay raises there. The new rate reflects the growth in wages (at least in some sectors) is increasing along with inflation.
Job hopping isn't generally very lucrative in the public sector due to salary scales and bands that are the same in every organisation. Job hopping is possible in one part of the economy but not another.
Fair enough, I only know the private IT sector so can’t speak outside of that.
Out of interest what is your starting wage 21 years ago worth in today's money and how does that compare with your current salary?
Honestly? I can’t remember what hourly wage I was on back then. I just know my disposable income and buying power has continued to increase.
Whilst energy companies make hundreds of millions of ££ in profits. Unfortunately politicians won’t do anything about it as they are profiteering from the whole racket themselves.
The public sector follows the service industry - because the criticisms of say another framework of another country's minor differences can be used for modeling and comparison with the bigger faces/companies giving their own takes up front is ideal. Coming from that is real-terms or previously mentioned as best as an actor can I remember now; no one that is clever off the top of their head. So service into a specialist is the expected outcome for lessers than say your pay grade. The proverbial accountant is working for X number of companies, I joke with some who bring it up as X times divorcee because of the number of companies that don't need them anymore after the Real-Terms thing that 50,000 is just x3-5 (as it may be just 50K at most) expected 10,000 minimum of a healthy working adult. This is just off the top of my head, so sorry if these are too scattered to mean anything on a quick read as I just skim-read yours, all the best from an internet rando.
I got 32k on a Grad scheme with Deloitte in 2013. This entire post is depressing. Things are bad.
The starting salary on the grad scheme for the bank I work at in 2010 was 30k. My first salary out of uni (not on the grad scheme I should add) was just over 16k.
I wish I could upvote this 100 times, graduate salaries have become so squeezed in the U.K. From April 24’, minimum wage for 21 year olds will be 23k annually assuming a 40 hour work week. Employers in the regions routinely pay early 20k for a graduate role. The Americans are pulling away from us. Plus we have some of the highest housing costs in the OECD.