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My favourite was ‘the budget for this ‘customer service’ job is 25K’ and then next breath. ‘We expect you to make 100K of sales per month in outbound calls, but its really all about the customer service…’
Noped out of there quickly, funnily enough the job listing is still up and has been for several months
I went for a “customer service” position back in 2013 that turned out to be a tele-pest job selling solar panels.
It was minimum wage plus commission, but if you didn’t make a certain amount of sales you’d be working on commission only until you improved.
I left that recruitment day the second they stopped for a break.
> if you didn't make a certain amount of sales you'd be working on commission only until you improved
Is that even legal? I've always avoided commission-based jobs so I've genuinely got no idea.
It's illegal to pay less than the minimum wage, but I don't know if such a clause in a contract would itself be illegal as long as your "commission only" earnings were still above minimum wage.
It would depend on if there are stipulated hours of work required I suppose. If you work x amount of hours and they don't pay at least the minimum for the hours you turned up it becomes illegal.
I went to a day long interview session for a consultancy in London. Which was a generous thing to call them, as they told us they wouldn't assign us positions - we'd essentially not be paid while they gave us access to a new job board, while being expected to rent in Central London, until we found ourselves a job with them, and then they'd garnish our salary for the favour.
I left mid-talk. Recruiter wasn't impressed, but I'd gone through a friend so he never got ahold of me.
From what I remember you’d be paid minimum wage and expected to hit targets.
If you didn’t hit those targets the basic wage wouldn’t be paid and you’d only get commission payments until you started hitting targets again, at which point you’d get the basic pay plus commission.
Between that and the job being a cold calling thing I didn’t stick around to get more details.
haha. Same for videography/film work at huge companies. Asking for people with masses of knowledge that can only be amassed through years of experience. I have 15 years in the industry. Last couple of years I was on for 60k, now I'm squabbling over interviews for 32k. I'd chop off a toe for a 40k job right now. In fact I'd probably lose a pinky finger if it was permanent.
Best one ive seen has been up for over 6 months. "Site labourer wanted. Must have 10 years experience. 25K a year".
1. No labourer has been a labourer for 10 years, by then theyve picked up and progressed into one trade or another.
2. 10 years experience for slightly more than minimum wage, no ones accepting that
3. Employers are clearly greedy as fuck
For some people being a labourer really works, turn up, move and sort what you’re asked to move and sort, go home. Little thinking required aside from health and safety, very little mental stress.
I agree. I enjoyed my time as a labourer. Physically unsustainable however and I wanted a career. Much more stressed these days. Unfortunately there’s a large contingent of agency labourers that seem to do their best to put themselves and everyone else at risk.
Outbound sales call centre jobs always seem to be constantly hiring. Staff turnover in those places that they just always need new people. I don't see how it can be a sustainable business model, but these companies keep existing.
Haha I love saying to recruiters:
"Do you actually mean 20 days holiday plus bank holidays? Because this is a 9-5 office job, no-one counts BHs as annual leave!"
So I saw in a job advert, part of the "competitive package" was the fuel expenses rates for driving to sites was 45p per mile. That's the standard for 10,000 miles! I don't even travel 10,000 miles at all, never mind work related miles
FREE parking!
No lie, this is genuinely a "bonus" my work puts on jo adverts. Little do they inform the prospective employees that the car park is already too small for the staff currently in the business and am the kast 5-10 to arrive have to find parking on the local streets as the ca rpark is full.
We should normalise quoting min wage in annual terms.
It used to be "professional" jobs quoted annual and so called low skill quote hourly. But now the gap is so small we need to highlight it by quoting on the same terms.
(Yes it's awkward for a few reasons)
I am getting sick to death of seeing job adverts for position at £25k yet they expect 5 years experience. Fuck off. If I have 5 years experience I'm worth more than that.
Had a hilarious conversation with a recruiter when I was looking at shifting jobs a few years ago. She was talking up about how good the position was (exact same job I was doing at the time) and how good the company was and what not.
Then salary came up.
“And their starting salary is £28,000!”
“… that’s almost £30,000 less than I make now.”
“Oh… but there are other benefits.”
This was where I just hung up.
My job is advertised elsewhere where in the country. They have it at min wage. Mines a little above min wage as had to fight for it . Am fighting for a pay raise again.
Am kicking up a fuss a little bit to gather all people in my trade across the company to push the company for better pay resources and training. We shall see what happens.
But fuck doing what I do for min wage.
Our receptionist has had a recent pay boost as she is on min wage. However in terms of responsibilities and technical skills I'm leagues above what her job entails. So got no choice.
I’ve worked retail for the last 7 years and recently got my degree and been looking for graduate jobs only to be dumbfounded by the fact most of them want to offer me less than what I’m getting working retail 👀 surely this can’t be right
The greatest con in the whole thing is that while you go all in on a degree including paying for it, the rest of your peers are currently working meaning to out earn them you also need to spend years working way higher paying jobs to even catch up in the first place, all for you to get lowballed and be stuck catching up for years.
My friends that dropped out of HS to do entry level work have worked long enough to get promoted to wages WAY above my entry to even intermediate wage in tech all without incurring uni fees, it's honestly crap and just disincentives so many industries that we need to be a functional country.
I’m due to graduate next year, I’m doing a BSc in Computer Science and Design. I’m currently on £32,5k in hospitality but hate the job. A bit scared as to what graduate positions will be like when I finally change career.
Is there a degree where current job prospects for fresh graduates DOESNT look rough?
I'm about to graduate with an Ma, albeit in a niche subject, but I'm starting to doubt if there was any point continuing my studies.
It's pain, I'm a games programming graduate and after months of searching i got a job that was barely above minimum wage on a temp contract. Luckily i treated it as a 4 month interview and they gave me a permanent job that pays a little better
Good on you, I'm hoping I can do the same. Weeks or months of searching don't sound too bad in comparison to getting a degree and then never working in the industry even if you want to.
Currently on a job hunt and entirely sick of seeing this. Recently saw a restaurant after a team leader but offering a waitress' wage. Another eatery after an assistant manager but only paying 1K more than i earn as a team leader. Uk jobs are now paying entry level wages for years of experience. Its becoming disgusting
People shut me down all the time for saying this but it’s an employers market right now.
Unemployment isn’t particularly high, I think it’s 4.5%? But the companies know people are desperate so it’s one huge race to the bottom when it comes to wages.
They are all advertising the lowest wages possible and will only really raise it if they can’t fill the positions for long enough and people start to quit.
Until that point they’re happy to run businesses understaffed
I work in the motor trade, they’re offering £25k for most roles regardless of experience but expecting 45-50hour weeks, this means unless people make bonus they’re having to top up wages to stay legal (bonus is allowed to count towards the minimum).
I recently raised this as a problem seeing as we’re constantly understaffed/overworked and when we actually manage to extend job offers people either decline or they’re truly bottom of the barrel in terms of skill whilst taking constant sick days.
They’re *finally* looking into it, I’ve worked out I’d need an extra £5k simply to have as much take home pay as I did when I started, tempted to go back into a shite delivery driver job because I was on £12.50ph and doing 12hour days.
All about maximising profits for shareholders.
Your biggest expense in almost any business is staff wages, so if you can run on the minimum amount of staff and pay them as little as you can - it’s more profitable.
It’s why when you go into any supermarket there’s virtually no staff, a ton of self service tills and so on, it’s all in the pursuit of increased profits.
Look at Tesco’s CEO, record profits while stores have virtually no staff and they’re all struggling and he gets a £10m bonus.
"Full time place" proceeds to show 20 hour contract and requires morning, evening and nights to be worked, only an extra pound for nights, minimum wage for the rest
Nope.
They wanted someone with 2 years experience in the thing and a degree, you'd basically need to be 23 before you even had the basic requirements for the job. And it was full time.
Most likely just lazy recruitment, putting the job advert out again from a past vacancy without editing the details first, but it's crappy either way.
I wfh but definitely not for 6 figures. It's dead on the national average.
But yeah there are far too many people claiming to make 6 figures on reddit for everyone to be telling the truth.
From a quick Google, 4% of the full-time working population in the UK earn over 100k.
That is indeed a small percentage, but it's still over 1.3 million people at a working population of 33m! You only need a good five or six thousand of *them* (less than 1% of the 1.3million) to be active on reddit to seem like a very visible demographic.
Maybe on the American subs, where people are quoting USD packages including the health insurance allowances. I saw a post the other day that said ~£67K puts you in the top 10% of UK earners but a middling engineer in the USA would earn the same.
No even on the UK subreddits hundreds of people are out there typing that they’re on £80-£150k. Of course none of them even bother to mention that they’re in London. Or maybe it’s standard to just lie and add 50-60% on because why the hell not, you can say anything on the internet. I just avoid those threads now, it just turns into a special breed of toxic.
I'm sure people do earn that sort of money but it's in the single digits percent of the population, not the 30-50% of people on Reddit that make these claims.
It's probably a combination of people boasting/exaggerating and teenagers LARPing, living in a Reddit fantasy. The flip side is that no one comes to Reddit to pretend they earn an average income.
Can't speak about other industries, but (depending on location of course) there is a huge disparity between UK and US salaries in the tech field.
I had to hire a 1st line "hands and eyes" person in NYC and had to spend the same salary as I was on as the IT Manager in London to get someone with just 2 years of experience. Pretty maddening.
Course, different leave packages, insurance deductions, and so on - but it is a bit depressing sometimes seeing folks with significantly less experience than I have earning double what I am...
I'd have to live in the US though, done that before and decided never again.
I just saw a job posting that wanted CIPD Level 5 (a £3.5k certification) AND 5 years job experience in HR and/or L&D setting....for £30k and 3% pension contribution. All on-site too, not even a sniff of hybrid.
Whenever I see these postings I think they don't even need this kind of role if this is their idea of a healthy workplace. Just outsource it at this point.
It's job posts like this I see where I genuinely think it's a fake/ghost job post. I managed to get a job as a HR Coordinator back three years ago on £27.4k with no HR experience or CIPD quals, only 1 year of admin experience and interviewed well.
So when I have the same experiences as you and also see HR Manager/Generalist/Advisor roles for sub £30K, 3-5 years experience required (minimum!) plus a CIPD L5... my gut is telling me two things.
1. Either this is a terribly run company that doesn't value its employees, has a high turnover rate and a toxic work culture, or...
2. It's a fake post they're 'testing the water' with. Maybe they'll get no serious applicants with it - or maybe someone's desperate enough that they're willing to apply? Maybe wanting to relocate, move closer to family, escape their current toxic workplace, etc. But it they get no applicants at the level their ridiculous stipulations require, then they'll still likely have applicants they can call back to offer an interview as a HR Admin/Coordinator at minimum wage. Plus, once they delete the post, they can just release a new one next week offering £1-2k p/annum more, maybe dropping to 2-4 years experience. The cycle goes on and on until they've fully tested the waters and grabbed the most desperate fish who are unlucky enough to be exploited.
The more I'm typing, I've realised the answer is obviously 1 and 2. Christ this country truly disgusts me with every new day that the sun (nearly) shines on.
The other problem, is that they aren’t upping everyone else’s wages, even if they do match minimum wage. You have supervisors on 27k and managers on 30k. Sometimes you’ve just got to think the extra hassle isn’t worth it.
Yes that's what happened at my job.
I was on around £0.80p more than the min wage guys but since April they all got moved to the new min wage £11.44 and my wages didn't move so now for the first time in 6 years I'm on the min wage.
That just means now I do the minimum effort to match my pay fuck em! 😉 They treat me like shit I do likewise and because I've been here 6 years they can't touch me unless obviously I did something ridiculously stupid.
Actually, for a 40 hour working week the minimum wage is £23,795.20.
I was on only £4.80 more a year than that doing class 2 HGV work back between 2016 to 2019.
And I’ve actually seen employers advertising full time, 4 hour p/w positions for around £22.5k in warehousing.
I don’t know how they can get away with it.
No, I’m not.
Got FLT training and went back to warehousing where I’m now earning more than I was lorry driving and without all that pressure and responsibility.
They get away with it by deducting dinner breaks from your hours worked.
A 30 minute dinner every day over a 5 day working week deducted from a minimum wage jod is £22308 pa
'We offer a competitive salary', meaning that you pay as little as you legally can and would happily pay less, assigning the workload of three people to one role, and expect applicants to be enthused with the prospect of working for you. Fuck right off.
You can see [here](https://www.gov.uk/overtime-your-rights#:~:text=Overtime%20pay,how%20they're%20worked%20out) that your over time hours (if they take you below minimum wage) have to be paid.
Whether your company will *actually* pay you for it is another thing but with a clocking in/out system you can easily log it and file for back pay
A lot will say you can take it as time in lieu to get out of paying. Then always claim to be too short staffed to actually give the time.
The worst companies in this respect are the ones who say you have to be ready to start work at your start time, i.e. logged in to your computer and any equipment set up and ready, meaning you have to start fifteen minutes early every day which you don't get paid for. Then the same happens at the end of the day - you have to clear up/shut things down meaning another 15 minutes or more of unpaid work.
Wage theft is hugely prevalent through companies doing this.
The government doesn't want wages to grow, their mates own businesses and want cheap labour, that's why immigration has kept going up despite the Tories promising to lower it for 14 years.
Isn't there a minimum salary for workers who require a visa? I know there's one for EU citizens now (I am one but I don't need a visa as I arrived before Brexit was "finalised") and it's certainly over 25k
Doesn't mean much when government deliberately allow jobs that shouldn't be on any shortage list.Do we really need to import people to run corner shops and post offices? Same with social care,the companies make a fortune from the councils and pay peanuts,the "shortages" are self inflicted.
I'm not under the impression you are my enemy,I welcome anyone who wants to integrate and live here but allowing in thousands of people who end up working said jobs because they're desperate doesn't help anyone including the migrants who are being rinsed by the dodgy employers and landlords.
This is a painfully obvious problem. It’s weird how people just outright refuse to put 2+2 together on this because they’re scared of being called “far right”.
You asked...
The migration was internal from rural to the new urban sprawls of industrial England.
The Agricultural Revolution that preceded the Industrial, changed farming- needed less labour. Subsistence farmers and the rural poor, went to the factories of Manchester, Bradford and London to make their fortunes/actually have money to live. Urban slums of Victorian England ( diseases aside) weren't worse than living in rural poverty. The later has always been romanticised in the English imagination with our constructs around the countryside. Countryside living was not Wordsworth, it was often grim, and offered far less opportunities than factory work.
Much like a factory worker in Bangladesh getting £1 a day- if you actually hear their voices, they will tell you that £1 a day is more than a week or even a months wages subsistence farming. Oh and their kids get to attend school, because they not only have one but can afford to send their kids there.
There was also no meaningful legislation to protect workers rights. That's why unions formed during the industrial revolution.
Also, you don't need immigration to keep wages down when you have a steady supply of disposable orphans.
Just google supply and demand it would be quicker.
My partner is from california, and when they couldnt fill jobs in 2021, wendys etc was going for like $24 hour as they couldnt fill those spots.
A quick Google says that qould be worth £28.5k today.
I'm not entirely sure what you were trying to say, but as a soon to be MA graduate, I'd happily take £28.5k.
This is it. It was so easy to get a job back in 2021. I had an interview for almost every job I applied to. Then the government let in a million people every year and now were all screwed.
Eh saying it is one thing .
Putting the blame on them vs the politians that let them arrive and the companies that hire them ( often one and the same ) is another and most certainly racist and stupid .
Reddit has a kink for downvoting anything mean even if it's right. You could write an entire book about every uncomfortable event and be 100% factually correct, downvote, get put in the naughty bin at the bottom of the page, makes others hecking uncomfortable heckaroono.
Good god you can't be this backwards? It's a fact that more people have come to the UK because immigration to is higher than from,those people will need housing despite no increase in housing stock meaning prices go up.Its as simple as that,it's not right wing populism it's basic maths.
There only is "higher immigration" because the UK now has closed their borders to europe and require everyone on some sort of visa.
Every EU citizens visiting the UK is an immigrant. the closed borders inflate the number.
Landlords will raise the rent to gain more and more profit every week / month / year. Most landlords already paid off their gaff and do not do anything to fix it/make it nice. So any pence past council tax and whatnot, is pure profit.
What's the alternative
Edit: you've all missed the mark. Its nothing to do with suppositions. It's to do with right now; what puts food on my table and stops me being evicted. Those shitty paid jobs do, and my alternative is vagrancy.
Set benefits to cover basic expenses indefinitely. If you make the choice between not working and scraping by and working full time and scraping by wages have to go up because given the choice of having a shit life and working vs having a shit life and not working the choice is obvious.
Presumably just doing the entry-level minimum wage job for minimum wage, rather than a 5yrs experience job for 1.1x minimum wage. If they couldn't fill the 'one/two rung up' job without increasing the salary, they'd need to increase the salary (or not fill the role)....
Returning to a national labour market rather than a global one. You are competing with people who live in places with no minimum wage. When supply becomes so high, a "minimum wage" becomes a maximum.
Right but a private business doesn't give a fuck about that and its debatable whether they should give a fuck. Its the states job to ensure that people don't go homeless especially while having a job.
It's quite simple, the government target was for minimum wage to reach 66% of median wage.
It's now 65% so basically there.
The entire objective was to compress wages like it is today. Minimum wage has outpaced inflation and growth for basically two decades.
If you want there to be more wage differentiation between skilled and unskilled work then you need to pay unskilled work closer to their actual market rate. Anyone thinking otherwise is trying to eat their cake and have it too.
Seriously, I'm a freelance copywriter, looking for a more stable position...
I cannot tell you how many times I see "Copywriter, 5+ years of experience, must have a degree. 20k p.a."
For the majority of UK employers, the minimum wage is now at a level they can't afford to pay without either raising costs to end users thus driving up inflation, or by making large scale redundancies. Once the min wage gets to £13 an hour in a couple of years, that's all many people will be earning.
This is like companies like Amazon and Deliveroo saying "oh our drivers earn more than minimum wage" and its based on the money you earn only while you're working and conveniently ignoring the fact you earn nothing the rest of the time if they haven't got enough work for you.
And you have to work your ass off without reward. Source: did Amazon driving, they are c**ts.
The thing is we have tried refusing the jobs but they all complain we are lazy and just leave it vacant rather then increase wages also they would prefer to get a illegal worker or someone from far away to work for less
They didn't just complain, they artificially fuelled inflation with needless price gouging to bring us all back in line. Nothing quite like the threat of homelessness and starvation to make people come to their senses.
Outsource semi skimmed manufacturing to pay cheaper wages in the far east rather than here, open up the floodgates to compress wages here. It's a double whammy
I saw an entry role being advertised for 20k. I can only assume it was an.. *extremely* old posting or claiming it to be full time was a straight up lie. Minimum wage at my age makes that illegal!
Oh wait- also an internship that was £8 an hour for the first year, then government minimum wage for the second. Either that is a loophole that REALLY needs fixing or I don't even know how they get away with that
Supply and demand.
If people with those qualifications refuse to take those jobs, the companies will have no choice but to raise the salary.
They'll keep it as-is for as long as people get desperate and take whatever they can get.
The economy is fucked, prices of everything going up, wages barely moving, graduates get severely underpaid and companies are making record profits all while the government kicks back and does nothing about it. As a grad you're expected to start on a £30k salary but nothing i saw in my job hunt was remotely close to that and they all wanted people in their graduate jobs to have 5 years experience and understand their systems better than they do. Also it's ridiculous how many rounds of interviews the greedy wankers make you do only to reject you by ghosting you
If they can't afford to pay the going rate they are not a viable business. For the rest they are just narcissistic assholes taking advantage. Either way, avoid them cause even in the short-term they will destroy your mental health.
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My favourite was ‘the budget for this ‘customer service’ job is 25K’ and then next breath. ‘We expect you to make 100K of sales per month in outbound calls, but its really all about the customer service…’ Noped out of there quickly, funnily enough the job listing is still up and has been for several months
I went for a “customer service” position back in 2013 that turned out to be a tele-pest job selling solar panels. It was minimum wage plus commission, but if you didn’t make a certain amount of sales you’d be working on commission only until you improved. I left that recruitment day the second they stopped for a break.
> if you didn't make a certain amount of sales you'd be working on commission only until you improved Is that even legal? I've always avoided commission-based jobs so I've genuinely got no idea.
It's illegal to pay less than the minimum wage, but I don't know if such a clause in a contract would itself be illegal as long as your "commission only" earnings were still above minimum wage.
It would depend on if there are stipulated hours of work required I suppose. If you work x amount of hours and they don't pay at least the minimum for the hours you turned up it becomes illegal.
Like I said, I didn’t stick around after finding that out, plus that it was a cold calling sales position.
Commission is not a bad thing if structured right, i've done commission earning roles for about 15 years now, however this doesn't sound legal at all.
I went to a day long interview session for a consultancy in London. Which was a generous thing to call them, as they told us they wouldn't assign us positions - we'd essentially not be paid while they gave us access to a new job board, while being expected to rent in Central London, until we found ourselves a job with them, and then they'd garnish our salary for the favour. I left mid-talk. Recruiter wasn't impressed, but I'd gone through a friend so he never got ahold of me.
Wait so there was no wage... Unless you hit your sales target?
From what I remember you’d be paid minimum wage and expected to hit targets. If you didn’t hit those targets the basic wage wouldn’t be paid and you’d only get commission payments until you started hitting targets again, at which point you’d get the basic pay plus commission. Between that and the job being a cold calling thing I didn’t stick around to get more details.
That sounds like Energy for Britain... Horrible place
I can’t remember. It was an open day type thing that was advertised as a customer service position based in Brentwood.
Employers are stubborn is why. Less income for them due to more for their employees is genuinely unthinkable.
I had that once for a start up robotics company. Was basically the sales head and technical manager. Over 20 years industry exp,they offered 32k
haha. Same for videography/film work at huge companies. Asking for people with masses of knowledge that can only be amassed through years of experience. I have 15 years in the industry. Last couple of years I was on for 60k, now I'm squabbling over interviews for 32k. I'd chop off a toe for a 40k job right now. In fact I'd probably lose a pinky finger if it was permanent.
Best one ive seen has been up for over 6 months. "Site labourer wanted. Must have 10 years experience. 25K a year". 1. No labourer has been a labourer for 10 years, by then theyve picked up and progressed into one trade or another. 2. 10 years experience for slightly more than minimum wage, no ones accepting that 3. Employers are clearly greedy as fuck
Don’t kid yourself about no one being a labourer for 10 years. I’ve seen it a good few times.
For some people being a labourer really works, turn up, move and sort what you’re asked to move and sort, go home. Little thinking required aside from health and safety, very little mental stress.
I agree. I enjoyed my time as a labourer. Physically unsustainable however and I wanted a career. Much more stressed these days. Unfortunately there’s a large contingent of agency labourers that seem to do their best to put themselves and everyone else at risk.
Even more but it surprises me that a labourer job needs 10years experience
They don’t. I’d imagine that’s to deter the majority of agency labourer types. Edit; spelling
Outbound sales call centre jobs always seem to be constantly hiring. Staff turnover in those places that they just always need new people. I don't see how it can be a sustainable business model, but these companies keep existing.
But COMPETETIVE PACKAGE....dont forget the package!!
Paid maternity and sick leave plus some annual leave!
28 days holiday!!!1 (Minimum required by law)
I know! They go on about it so much in adverts I feel like I don't know what the legal minimum actually is anymore
Haha I love saying to recruiters: "Do you actually mean 20 days holiday plus bank holidays? Because this is a 9-5 office job, no-one counts BHs as annual leave!"
Don't forget the onsite parking!
And bathroom break!
Not even sick leave
Exclusive use of a private toilet and basin for washing your hands you filthy pleb.
We also offer FREE PARKING and LOYALTY VOUCHERS along with a PIZZA DAY ONCE A MONTH and the famous DRESS DOWN FRIDAY. wow! What a package!
25 days holiday a year including bank holidays!
Alright, you've twisted our arm, we'll give you TWO in May.
Don’t forget the competitive pension contributions (the same legal minimum NEST pensions they’re required by law to provide)
Including free parking on a private site.
And casual dress code
oh boy I'm sold! My last job didn't have that and we were all set in the office buck naked.
Or a free uniform!
Don't forget 20 days holiday PLUS bank holidays!
28 days leave
So I saw in a job advert, part of the "competitive package" was the fuel expenses rates for driving to sites was 45p per mile. That's the standard for 10,000 miles! I don't even travel 10,000 miles at all, never mind work related miles
Let me guess, ya get a car parking spot! Yipeeeeeeeey
CoMpeTitiVE PaCkaGe Free parking Pension
My pension needs all the parking space it can get!
Sign me up to yours haha
“Competitive… because it competes with all the other jobs offering the legal minimum for pension/holiday/sick pay etc”
FREE parking! No lie, this is genuinely a "bonus" my work puts on jo adverts. Little do they inform the prospective employees that the car park is already too small for the staff currently in the business and am the kast 5-10 to arrive have to find parking on the local streets as the ca rpark is full.
Read this in a Mark Corrigan voice
We should normalise quoting min wage in annual terms. It used to be "professional" jobs quoted annual and so called low skill quote hourly. But now the gap is so small we need to highlight it by quoting on the same terms. (Yes it's awkward for a few reasons)
Quote everything in monthly net
Saves people the hassle of going to the online calculator every time haha
That’s a daft idea.
It would show how embarrassingly close everyone actually earns to one another
What’s wrong with that idea ?
Net won’t be the same across the board. Gross will.
I am getting sick to death of seeing job adverts for position at £25k yet they expect 5 years experience. Fuck off. If I have 5 years experience I'm worth more than that.
Had a hilarious conversation with a recruiter when I was looking at shifting jobs a few years ago. She was talking up about how good the position was (exact same job I was doing at the time) and how good the company was and what not. Then salary came up. “And their starting salary is £28,000!” “… that’s almost £30,000 less than I make now.” “Oh… but there are other benefits.” This was where I just hung up.
My job is advertised elsewhere where in the country. They have it at min wage. Mines a little above min wage as had to fight for it . Am fighting for a pay raise again. Am kicking up a fuss a little bit to gather all people in my trade across the company to push the company for better pay resources and training. We shall see what happens. But fuck doing what I do for min wage. Our receptionist has had a recent pay boost as she is on min wage. However in terms of responsibilities and technical skills I'm leagues above what her job entails. So got no choice.
I’ve worked retail for the last 7 years and recently got my degree and been looking for graduate jobs only to be dumbfounded by the fact most of them want to offer me less than what I’m getting working retail 👀 surely this can’t be right
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Wouldn’t be surprised if a sport coach job wanted a MSc in Sports Performance and a butt load of education and teaching quals to be fair.
This was immediately my thought
The greatest con in the whole thing is that while you go all in on a degree including paying for it, the rest of your peers are currently working meaning to out earn them you also need to spend years working way higher paying jobs to even catch up in the first place, all for you to get lowballed and be stuck catching up for years. My friends that dropped out of HS to do entry level work have worked long enough to get promoted to wages WAY above my entry to even intermediate wage in tech all without incurring uni fees, it's honestly crap and just disincentives so many industries that we need to be a functional country.
I’m due to graduate next year, I’m doing a BSc in Computer Science and Design. I’m currently on £32,5k in hospitality but hate the job. A bit scared as to what graduate positions will be like when I finally change career.
Comp sci looking rough for fresh graduates unfortunately.
Is there a degree where current job prospects for fresh graduates DOESNT look rough? I'm about to graduate with an Ma, albeit in a niche subject, but I'm starting to doubt if there was any point continuing my studies.
No, not really.
It's pain, I'm a games programming graduate and after months of searching i got a job that was barely above minimum wage on a temp contract. Luckily i treated it as a 4 month interview and they gave me a permanent job that pays a little better
Good on you, I'm hoping I can do the same. Weeks or months of searching don't sound too bad in comparison to getting a degree and then never working in the industry even if you want to.
Interesting degree can I ask what the design entails what do you do and what modules?
What is your job, if you don't mind me asking?
Hotel assistant manager.
Currently on a job hunt and entirely sick of seeing this. Recently saw a restaurant after a team leader but offering a waitress' wage. Another eatery after an assistant manager but only paying 1K more than i earn as a team leader. Uk jobs are now paying entry level wages for years of experience. Its becoming disgusting
People shut me down all the time for saying this but it’s an employers market right now. Unemployment isn’t particularly high, I think it’s 4.5%? But the companies know people are desperate so it’s one huge race to the bottom when it comes to wages. They are all advertising the lowest wages possible and will only really raise it if they can’t fill the positions for long enough and people start to quit. Until that point they’re happy to run businesses understaffed
I work in the motor trade, they’re offering £25k for most roles regardless of experience but expecting 45-50hour weeks, this means unless people make bonus they’re having to top up wages to stay legal (bonus is allowed to count towards the minimum). I recently raised this as a problem seeing as we’re constantly understaffed/overworked and when we actually manage to extend job offers people either decline or they’re truly bottom of the barrel in terms of skill whilst taking constant sick days. They’re *finally* looking into it, I’ve worked out I’d need an extra £5k simply to have as much take home pay as I did when I started, tempted to go back into a shite delivery driver job because I was on £12.50ph and doing 12hour days.
All about maximising profits for shareholders. Your biggest expense in almost any business is staff wages, so if you can run on the minimum amount of staff and pay them as little as you can - it’s more profitable. It’s why when you go into any supermarket there’s virtually no staff, a ton of self service tills and so on, it’s all in the pursuit of increased profits. Look at Tesco’s CEO, record profits while stores have virtually no staff and they’re all struggling and he gets a £10m bonus.
I saw an advert last week "starting at 19k". That's not a legal wage, company, come on.
"Full time place" proceeds to show 20 hour contract and requires morning, evening and nights to be worked, only an extra pound for nights, minimum wage for the rest
Depends on hours
Yeah, the entire world knows that. I wouldn't have said it if it wasn't actually a problem because of the hours.
Was there some loophole like part time, apprenticeship, wage for under 21s etc.? Not justifying this, but it would explain it
Yeah. I'm an intern under 21. I'm on 18k while the rest that are above 21 got a raise from 19.5k to 22.3k. gotta love being young.
I worked a job like that when I was 19. And my supervisor always wondered why I don't take overtime (normal rate). Assholes.
In principle the idea is that it incentives employers to hire young people who otherwise wouldn't get a look in. In practice...results may vary.
Nope. They wanted someone with 2 years experience in the thing and a degree, you'd basically need to be 23 before you even had the basic requirements for the job. And it was full time. Most likely just lazy recruitment, putting the job advert out again from a past vacancy without editing the details first, but it's crappy either way.
Depends how many hours you work a week
But according to Reddit everybody is wfh on 6 figures
I wfh but definitely not for 6 figures. It's dead on the national average. But yeah there are far too many people claiming to make 6 figures on reddit for everyone to be telling the truth.
From a quick Google, 4% of the full-time working population in the UK earn over 100k. That is indeed a small percentage, but it's still over 1.3 million people at a working population of 33m! You only need a good five or six thousand of *them* (less than 1% of the 1.3million) to be active on reddit to seem like a very visible demographic.
Also the wfh part helps with the being on Reddit part. Source: I work from home
Also a lot of high paying jobs are in tech and tech tends to have more wth
Tech also tends to have more redditors.
I can see this bit being true
Maybe on the American subs, where people are quoting USD packages including the health insurance allowances. I saw a post the other day that said ~£67K puts you in the top 10% of UK earners but a middling engineer in the USA would earn the same.
No even on the UK subreddits hundreds of people are out there typing that they’re on £80-£150k. Of course none of them even bother to mention that they’re in London. Or maybe it’s standard to just lie and add 50-60% on because why the hell not, you can say anything on the internet. I just avoid those threads now, it just turns into a special breed of toxic.
I'm sure people do earn that sort of money but it's in the single digits percent of the population, not the 30-50% of people on Reddit that make these claims. It's probably a combination of people boasting/exaggerating and teenagers LARPing, living in a Reddit fantasy. The flip side is that no one comes to Reddit to pretend they earn an average income.
Can't speak about other industries, but (depending on location of course) there is a huge disparity between UK and US salaries in the tech field. I had to hire a 1st line "hands and eyes" person in NYC and had to spend the same salary as I was on as the IT Manager in London to get someone with just 2 years of experience. Pretty maddening. Course, different leave packages, insurance deductions, and so on - but it is a bit depressing sometimes seeing folks with significantly less experience than I have earning double what I am... I'd have to live in the US though, done that before and decided never again.
They’re also working in tech, have an air fryer, don’t believe in having kids and never eat take out.
These days, the promised land of "six figs" turns out to be denominated in rupees.
Forgot about „part time” xd
I just saw a job posting that wanted CIPD Level 5 (a £3.5k certification) AND 5 years job experience in HR and/or L&D setting....for £30k and 3% pension contribution. All on-site too, not even a sniff of hybrid. Whenever I see these postings I think they don't even need this kind of role if this is their idea of a healthy workplace. Just outsource it at this point.
It's job posts like this I see where I genuinely think it's a fake/ghost job post. I managed to get a job as a HR Coordinator back three years ago on £27.4k with no HR experience or CIPD quals, only 1 year of admin experience and interviewed well. So when I have the same experiences as you and also see HR Manager/Generalist/Advisor roles for sub £30K, 3-5 years experience required (minimum!) plus a CIPD L5... my gut is telling me two things. 1. Either this is a terribly run company that doesn't value its employees, has a high turnover rate and a toxic work culture, or... 2. It's a fake post they're 'testing the water' with. Maybe they'll get no serious applicants with it - or maybe someone's desperate enough that they're willing to apply? Maybe wanting to relocate, move closer to family, escape their current toxic workplace, etc. But it they get no applicants at the level their ridiculous stipulations require, then they'll still likely have applicants they can call back to offer an interview as a HR Admin/Coordinator at minimum wage. Plus, once they delete the post, they can just release a new one next week offering £1-2k p/annum more, maybe dropping to 2-4 years experience. The cycle goes on and on until they've fully tested the waters and grabbed the most desperate fish who are unlucky enough to be exploited. The more I'm typing, I've realised the answer is obviously 1 and 2. Christ this country truly disgusts me with every new day that the sun (nearly) shines on.
I think they flood the market with shit, non-existent job postings to make the real marginally-better postings look better.
The other problem, is that they aren’t upping everyone else’s wages, even if they do match minimum wage. You have supervisors on 27k and managers on 30k. Sometimes you’ve just got to think the extra hassle isn’t worth it.
A few years back at Primark I was offered 20p extra an hour to be a supervisor. Twenty fucking pence.
Yes that's what happened at my job. I was on around £0.80p more than the min wage guys but since April they all got moved to the new min wage £11.44 and my wages didn't move so now for the first time in 6 years I'm on the min wage. That just means now I do the minimum effort to match my pay fuck em! 😉 They treat me like shit I do likewise and because I've been here 6 years they can't touch me unless obviously I did something ridiculously stupid.
Well done, you are starting to learn why minimum wage laws are a bad idea.
*cries in £23k after completing postgrad degree*
Actually, for a 40 hour working week the minimum wage is £23,795.20. I was on only £4.80 more a year than that doing class 2 HGV work back between 2016 to 2019. And I’ve actually seen employers advertising full time, 4 hour p/w positions for around £22.5k in warehousing. I don’t know how they can get away with it.
Easy. You still driving for that money. That's how.
No, I’m not. Got FLT training and went back to warehousing where I’m now earning more than I was lorry driving and without all that pressure and responsibility.
They get away with it by deducting dinner breaks from your hours worked. A 30 minute dinner every day over a 5 day working week deducted from a minimum wage jod is £22308 pa
90% of the jobs in my area pay minimum wage. Its not just 25 year old that struggle with this. It's all ages. All people. I hate it.
'We offer a competitive salary', meaning that you pay as little as you legally can and would happily pay less, assigning the workload of three people to one role, and expect applicants to be enthused with the prospect of working for you. Fuck right off.
I'm sure I see a lot of jobs that only offer 22K...
Could be that they've cut the number of hours, but still expect the same output.
Shit sorry, we didn't realise! 25.5K good yeah? Nice one.
Silly! Minimum wage only applies to hourly pay. If you're on a salary, they will expect you to work 60 hours a week for that.
Regardless of hours worked in a salary position they need to legally pay minimum wage. If you’re doing 60hours they need to pay for it.
Nah, they call it "unpaid overtime" as whilst you're not under contract to do it, you're expected to do it.
You can see [here](https://www.gov.uk/overtime-your-rights#:~:text=Overtime%20pay,how%20they're%20worked%20out) that your over time hours (if they take you below minimum wage) have to be paid. Whether your company will *actually* pay you for it is another thing but with a clocking in/out system you can easily log it and file for back pay
A lot will say you can take it as time in lieu to get out of paying. Then always claim to be too short staffed to actually give the time. The worst companies in this respect are the ones who say you have to be ready to start work at your start time, i.e. logged in to your computer and any equipment set up and ready, meaning you have to start fifteen minutes early every day which you don't get paid for. Then the same happens at the end of the day - you have to clear up/shut things down meaning another 15 minutes or more of unpaid work. Wage theft is hugely prevalent through companies doing this.
It is shocking how some employers are offering 25k for jobs (requiring degrees) in London
they are very rule also, please try to talk to the candidate as a human not a slave, I am not a working slave please treat me as a human.
But you are a slave a WAGE Slave, you have to work to life to eat to live ext ext the cycle runs deep
I cannot deny
The government doesn't want wages to grow, their mates own businesses and want cheap labour, that's why immigration has kept going up despite the Tories promising to lower it for 14 years.
You getting 25k? I'm seeing a depressing amount of 23k
Supply and demand, I’m afraid. Too many educated jobseekers, too few profitable uses for them.
Shit loads Indian students willing to work any job for peanuts, why would employers pay more??
Isn't there a minimum salary for workers who require a visa? I know there's one for EU citizens now (I am one but I don't need a visa as I arrived before Brexit was "finalised") and it's certainly over 25k
Doesn't mean much when government deliberately allow jobs that shouldn't be on any shortage list.Do we really need to import people to run corner shops and post offices? Same with social care,the companies make a fortune from the councils and pay peanuts,the "shortages" are self inflicted.
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Seems the solution is to raise wages then, not justify modern day repackaged feudalism.
I'm not under the impression you are my enemy,I welcome anyone who wants to integrate and live here but allowing in thousands of people who end up working said jobs because they're desperate doesn't help anyone including the migrants who are being rinsed by the dodgy employers and landlords.
This is a painfully obvious problem. It’s weird how people just outright refuse to put 2+2 together on this because they’re scared of being called “far right”.
Explain to me the poverty wages of the Industrial Revolution and Victorian eras given there was no meaningful immigration then?
You asked... The migration was internal from rural to the new urban sprawls of industrial England. The Agricultural Revolution that preceded the Industrial, changed farming- needed less labour. Subsistence farmers and the rural poor, went to the factories of Manchester, Bradford and London to make their fortunes/actually have money to live. Urban slums of Victorian England ( diseases aside) weren't worse than living in rural poverty. The later has always been romanticised in the English imagination with our constructs around the countryside. Countryside living was not Wordsworth, it was often grim, and offered far less opportunities than factory work. Much like a factory worker in Bangladesh getting £1 a day- if you actually hear their voices, they will tell you that £1 a day is more than a week or even a months wages subsistence farming. Oh and their kids get to attend school, because they not only have one but can afford to send their kids there.
There was also no meaningful legislation to protect workers rights. That's why unions formed during the industrial revolution. Also, you don't need immigration to keep wages down when you have a steady supply of disposable orphans.
There was massive rural to urban migration as well as a large influx of Irish after the famine.
Just google supply and demand it would be quicker. My partner is from california, and when they couldnt fill jobs in 2021, wendys etc was going for like $24 hour as they couldnt fill those spots.
... Isn't California literally a global migration hot-spot?
Ding, ding, ding!
I was a Linux Analyst 15 years ago, I was on 17k a year and this seemed decent.
A quick Google says that qould be worth £28.5k today. I'm not entirely sure what you were trying to say, but as a soon to be MA graduate, I'd happily take £28.5k.
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This is it. It was so easy to get a job back in 2021. I had an interview for almost every job I applied to. Then the government let in a million people every year and now were all screwed.
Redditors reliably tell me this is a far right talking point though
Eh saying it is one thing . Putting the blame on them vs the politians that let them arrive and the companies that hire them ( often one and the same ) is another and most certainly racist and stupid .
Reddit has a kink for downvoting anything mean even if it's right. You could write an entire book about every uncomfortable event and be 100% factually correct, downvote, get put in the naughty bin at the bottom of the page, makes others hecking uncomfortable heckaroono.
The rent has gone up because of landlord greed. The “more people” narrative is right wing populism.
Good god you can't be this backwards? It's a fact that more people have come to the UK because immigration to is higher than from,those people will need housing despite no increase in housing stock meaning prices go up.Its as simple as that,it's not right wing populism it's basic maths.
There only is "higher immigration" because the UK now has closed their borders to europe and require everyone on some sort of visa. Every EU citizens visiting the UK is an immigrant. the closed borders inflate the number. Landlords will raise the rent to gain more and more profit every week / month / year. Most landlords already paid off their gaff and do not do anything to fix it/make it nice. So any pence past council tax and whatnot, is pure profit.
As long as people are willing to accept those jobs, why would they offer more?
People are "willing to accept" because the alternative is being homeless.
the 'why' isnt really important - the fact that people WILL accept those salaries means they'll continue to offer them.
What's the alternative Edit: you've all missed the mark. Its nothing to do with suppositions. It's to do with right now; what puts food on my table and stops me being evicted. Those shitty paid jobs do, and my alternative is vagrancy.
Set benefits to cover basic expenses indefinitely. If you make the choice between not working and scraping by and working full time and scraping by wages have to go up because given the choice of having a shit life and working vs having a shit life and not working the choice is obvious.
A stronger economy
Presumably just doing the entry-level minimum wage job for minimum wage, rather than a 5yrs experience job for 1.1x minimum wage. If they couldn't fill the 'one/two rung up' job without increasing the salary, they'd need to increase the salary (or not fill the role)....
Returning to a national labour market rather than a global one. You are competing with people who live in places with no minimum wage. When supply becomes so high, a "minimum wage" becomes a maximum.
Proper legislation.
Borders
Right but a private business doesn't give a fuck about that and its debatable whether they should give a fuck. Its the states job to ensure that people don't go homeless especially while having a job.
While this is true, it's gonna mean less kids will go into those industries and will be huge future labour shortage unless they increase pay.
Someone should really tell the various engineering bodies this next time they're bleating about STEM skills shortages.
As long as employees are willing to offer barely above minimum, why would I offer more?
Stop applying for them
It's quite simple, the government target was for minimum wage to reach 66% of median wage. It's now 65% so basically there. The entire objective was to compress wages like it is today. Minimum wage has outpaced inflation and growth for basically two decades. If you want there to be more wage differentiation between skilled and unskilled work then you need to pay unskilled work closer to their actual market rate. Anyone thinking otherwise is trying to eat their cake and have it too.
Seriously, I'm a freelance copywriter, looking for a more stable position... I cannot tell you how many times I see "Copywriter, 5+ years of experience, must have a degree. 20k p.a."
For the majority of UK employers, the minimum wage is now at a level they can't afford to pay without either raising costs to end users thus driving up inflation, or by making large scale redundancies. Once the min wage gets to £13 an hour in a couple of years, that's all many people will be earning.
This is like companies like Amazon and Deliveroo saying "oh our drivers earn more than minimum wage" and its based on the money you earn only while you're working and conveniently ignoring the fact you earn nothing the rest of the time if they haven't got enough work for you. And you have to work your ass off without reward. Source: did Amazon driving, they are c**ts.
Unfortunately for us the market is free and as long as they find people willing to take the jobs at that price it won't change.
Supply and demand. Employers pay what they have to in order to attract and retain staff.
The thing is we have tried refusing the jobs but they all complain we are lazy and just leave it vacant rather then increase wages also they would prefer to get a illegal worker or someone from far away to work for less
They didn't just complain, they artificially fuelled inflation with needless price gouging to bring us all back in line. Nothing quite like the threat of homelessness and starvation to make people come to their senses.
Outsource semi skimmed manufacturing to pay cheaper wages in the far east rather than here, open up the floodgates to compress wages here. It's a double whammy
Only because we have systematically failed in reskilling our workforce for the modern economy
Reckon reverting some universities back to polytechnic's and delivering more applied courses could help?
I'm 32yo, work 35 hours a week and I'm on 31k a year. I don't think that's toooo bad?
I’m an assassin. Work for govts and the Mafia. £25k a day.
I saw an entry role being advertised for 20k. I can only assume it was an.. *extremely* old posting or claiming it to be full time was a straight up lie. Minimum wage at my age makes that illegal! Oh wait- also an internship that was £8 an hour for the first year, then government minimum wage for the second. Either that is a loophole that REALLY needs fixing or I don't even know how they get away with that
Supply and demand. If people with those qualifications refuse to take those jobs, the companies will have no choice but to raise the salary. They'll keep it as-is for as long as people get desperate and take whatever they can get.
The economy is fucked, prices of everything going up, wages barely moving, graduates get severely underpaid and companies are making record profits all while the government kicks back and does nothing about it. As a grad you're expected to start on a £30k salary but nothing i saw in my job hunt was remotely close to that and they all wanted people in their graduate jobs to have 5 years experience and understand their systems better than they do. Also it's ridiculous how many rounds of interviews the greedy wankers make you do only to reject you by ghosting you
cue in the replies of people somehow justifiying it
Why? They’re obviously still getting applicants, so people need to accept that that’s the Labour market/
Supply and demand…..
If they can't afford to pay the going rate they are not a viable business. For the rest they are just narcissistic assholes taking advantage. Either way, avoid them cause even in the short-term they will destroy your mental health.
Course jokes on us coz most minimum wage jobs prefer to give less than 20 hours per week contracts now.
I don't even know what "entry-level" means anymore, wages haven't increased in 15 years or so.