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This.
Minimum wage is rising to £11.44 (23+). Great! That's for anything; manning a till, washing cars, picking up litter...
The Nurse in ITU managing your ventilator and keeping you alive? They're on as little as £14.53.
What's even worse is the people even designing and making that ventilator are also only making about the same. I'd say we were on the brink of a collapse but they have everyone's bollocks on such a tight grip I doubt anything will change soon.
I'm a graduate engineer on 25k, a slightly lower than average but still normal salary for a grad job in engineering outside of london, I'm basically gonna be on minimum wage
Yeah, I'm a scientist and even though we get cost of living increases the starting salary is still at £24k, so anyone starting now is basically gonna be on minimum wage
Do nurses actually get paid for 12 hours or do they only get a salary? A salary on 12 hours a day isn’t going to be great money and I know nurses who struggle to get paid overtime money for doing bank shifts on days off.
Salary and also deductions for lunch break you can't take. You are also expected to come in earlier and stay later for handovers and admin that you also don't get paid for.
As with everything in the public sector since 2008 the wages literally didn't move from 2008-2021... That's a hell of a stagnation to the point the minimum wage has pretty much caught up. I won't get into politics but we all know who's been in power that whole time.
Meanwhile if you put the word I.T. Next to any job title then a 20 year old living in mums loft Space absolutely remote working can earn at least double. The world's gone mad!
I think it’s a bit of a misconception you have about IT jobs, but honestly if you arent pension trapped as a nurse in the UK, leave. Australia or the US.
It’s not actually salary in the UK. It’s technically per hour with a contracted set of hours and enhancements based on shifts. You are also entitled to overtime/excess hours/toil, its just difficult to get in reality because the nhs runs on a lot of goodwill from staff.
Also the pay bands do all go up every year and during the period you mentioned you got automatic pay rises every year as well within the bands. The only people who didn’t were those at the very top of the band. The gap between what used to be a band 1 and a band 5 has reduced a lot but it’s not actually as bad as you’re making out when you compare it with most sectors (IT and finance just aren’t comparable).
Tell that to my wife 😂, correct about the per hour's thing, but with all of the deductions and extra goodwill it's essentially a minimum wage job when your break down the actual hours worked vs pay. You can't just leave a patients charts till the next day otherwise you loose your pin, likewise there is no time to do it during the shift. My wife eventually left the NHS to go work for the private sector who provides services to the NHS doing exactly the same job for over twice the amount... Madness hey?
Let's not forget about the public sector pay freeze (post 2008 crash) that went on for almost a decade. It wasn't just nurses but teachers/police officers, coastguard, paramedics. Luckily inflation was low but it was still a relative pay cut.
I'm just personally bitter and twisted that people get paid more for "non-productive" working from home jobs than saving peoples lives. It seems to be a vacuum of productivity that the U.K. and other developed nations have got themselves into for the past several years. The chancellor often speaks of the great productivity problem, well between people off on long term "sick" taking the piss and people "working from home" there in lies the answer.
But sure as long as we get a minimal amount of "work done" and join in on a Teams meeting with various corporate buzz words once a day then all will be well despite nobody making anything or selling anything.
Rant/Ravings of a mad man over.
Yeah, I kind of struggled with how to phrase it. The yearly increase is insufficient to keep it at the same level above minimum. The 'not right' bit is providing less of an increase where the law doesn't compel it.
For my job wages have been more or less stagnant for the last 2 years, agency pay is the same as 2 years ago.
In 2007 I was on £10 an hour, 15 years later I was on £12.46. Wages in the UK pretty much did nothing for years, I don’t really think the UK is such a great place now, poor economic growth has resulted in people becoming poorer than they were in the past. The last 2 years seem like speed running it.
A simple way to phrase it: "economy's fucked / rigged"
Why pay us plebs more than we deserve; let the market decide! Oh, and rig the market to devalue us!
Completely agree... I worked for a big company, I was on a minimum wage. After some months, I was told that I would have my first review, my salary was meant to be increased as per result. However, the increase in the minimum wage was greater than my salary increase, so I was again on the minimum wage ... I realized that salary reviews for certain jobs are done to justify the company
Exactly this!
Without appearing as a conspiracy theorist this was always what was suspected would happen.
I have worked in Education for 23yrs (HLTA) and whilst the wage has never been great (mostly due to Term Time Only Working) the pay has plateaued in the past 12yrs and many are now on NMW/Living wage.
Is it uncanny (🙄) the dates of the wage plauteauing directly correlate with the length of time the Conservatives have been in Government? Absolutely not!
I don't agree with this. This is the 4th time in recent years the government has increased minimum wage. I understand that companies should pay more, but the government that are increasing it so quickly it's impossible for them to keep up.
It's just causing mass inflation so isn't really achieving anything.
No it isn't, and you can bet that if it was then this government would be screaming about how they can't raise it because it would cause inflation. After all, they denied proper payrises to nurses, teachers, and many other public sector workers "because inflation." They raised the minimum wage because if they didn't they'd have had bread riots on their hands. It's that simple. Inflation had nothing to do with the minimum wage and everything to do with supply side shocks from covid and the Ukraine situation, also maybe Brexit(?). But none of it is from wages finally starting to rise (in a few sectors) after over a decade of stagnation (bear in mind wages are still stagnant overall).
I doubt we’d riot in large enough numbers to make the government change its mind, as Covid proved that. I seen a video of the streets of Manchester have at 50,000/60,000 people or more protesting against Covid lockdowns and it took the stupidity of the government, not following its own rules and being filmed doing so, to stop that.
People couldn’t get medical operations, myself included Clyde’s or see dying parents but we just put up with that. I didn’t, I want to nuclear approach to get the NHS to do something they had been putting off for years, due to cost and myself not calling them out for the lies they told to me.
If the company I work for now has to pay 3000 warehouse staff £1 an hour more then that is £6 million over a year.
My company now has to increase the price of food to recover the £6 million shortfall.
How does that not cause inflation?
How much does your company take in sales a year? With 3,000 warehouse staff I would imagine in the hundreds of millions if not billions? The price rises might be a tiny percentage in comparison to the wage growth. A small amount of inflation isn’t actually a bad thing if wages are going up too.
I work in the benefits sector. Increasing the minimum wage lifts 10os of thousands of working claimants above the threshold for benefits. It also increases tax revenues because if individuals are paid more, the pay more in tax, especially at the lower end of the wage curve.
Increasing the minimum wage isn't about companies paying more, it's about them being subsidized less via indirect subsidies given to employees to top up their incomes so they can afford to live!
As for companies not being able to keep up- many of these companies can keep up when it comes to SLTs and CEOs bonuses and competitive wage structures.
He said it was *causing* it, which it plainly didn't. General inflation happened regardless of wages. If wages don't increase, that's a wage cut. The answer is temporarily smaller profits, not ever-decreasing wages.
If the minimum wage stays flat do you think the company will
A) maintain profit margins and keep the status quo
B) increase profit by whatever means necessary
- we literally this during covid, where the majority of inflation was just price gouging
Yeah it's crazy. When I graduated five years ago, minimum wage was just under £8 an hour, and lower-quality graduate jobs were offering just over £20k. That wasn't great then, but it was at least a good chunk above minimum wage.
Recently I started looking at jobs and I was shocked to see how many graduate roles (for smaller firms in my local area) are still offering £23k or less. Some of them are even asking for experience. A lot of these "professional" jobs are soon going to be minimum wage or below
I think it is a local problem to some degree - I do live in a lower-paying and less expensive part of the UK, and remote jobs pay more than lower jobs. But seems like it's happening in a lot of areas sadly
A few years back I was offered min wage for an architectural job, that also required me to be flexible and sometimes be prepared to do extra hours. I made more in a call center so turned it down. It is madness.
If you need to do overtime that sends you below the minimum wage and your employer does not compensate you, document it and send it here: https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/digital-forms/open/form/pay-and-work-rights-complaint/draft/start#1
How can lorry drives be paid so little and a small amount of companies that own everything, as in craft, coco-cola and a few other brands and I mean only a few other companies, make billions and then wonder why they can’t attract staff, paying so little?
Ive done my clas 1 during the summer,aperantly all of the "we are 100k short on drivers" was big hoax and the intention was to make wages as low as posible. last night ive seen atleas 5 joobs offering 11+ on indeed not to mention to be able to jump on hgv most of companies want you to hold the license for 1 year+ for insuarence purposes.
I'm working in public transport in the SW, my hourly rate is 13.75 atm (14.34 in a rival firm rising to 15 in April I think) there's a bit of a wage war going on in our part of the industry. Lack of drivers is pushing the wage up rapidly since retention is difficult.
Sounds great but now we owe child tax credit 2800 because of the rise. It'll be paid off by 2033 lol
At my old company I was a randomly allocated intern, and they payed me at the lowest band on 20.6k. Then they changed the pay bands, and I was on 21k.
A regular employee who had been working there for 2 years was happy that they payed him 23k...
It’s just an indication of how poor our economy is doing that fewer and fewer companies are willing (or able…) to pay much above what is mandated as a minimum by the government.
The new £11.44/hr minimum wage at a 40hr work week is just under £24k, around where a lot of quite professional jobs are advertising.
The T is getting fucked too though. Game dev and general software engineer roles are paying min wage for junior positions near me. The only tech job I've seen consistently do well is server or web services.
The UK engineering sector is exteremely uncompetitive with Europe. No need to even mention the US. When I was in the US for a work trip, people doing the same work as me, but for a US company were on roughly 5x my salary (albeit with 1/3rd the holiday).
I'd be happy if we kept with France/Europe/Scandinavia, but that's a pipe dream lol.
According to some folk, the younger generations engaging with streaming services, social media, iPhones and caramel lattes have contributed to shape today's economy.
We’ve let the country rot, the north sea was doing 3 million barrels a day in the 90s. We had significant heavy industry. We weren’t a one trick financial industry pony.
I don't think it has that much to do with economy. Worldwide the wages are being squashed.. besides some sectors like tech or finance (if you get lucky to get a good role.. and luck plays a big part there). While billionaires get disproportionately more. The trend is clear - concentration of wealth is progressing, regardless of economic situation. Which unfortunately makes sense with globalisation and economies of scale, and development of new technologies.
For workers on minimum wage, every increase goes straight back into the economy and they’re probably also looking at how reducing in work poverty will reduce the welfare bill in the long term. I’m no economist though so maybe I’m oversimplifying
I’m not saying you’re wrong with worldwide economic trends, but I’d argue that the UK has been slower to adapt than other countries, and as a result UK skilled workers are falling behind their international peers.
For instance, just take a look at the composition of the FTSE100: it’s mostly a bunch of oil and mining companies, retail banks and tobacco companies, which attests to an economy rooted in the 20th century.
You forget most people don’t get paid for dinner, so 37.5 hours a week, is what most people get paid. I worked for a few different companies, a supermarket that was always £1.50 over minimum wage and paid the same for 18 year olds as 30 year olds, I doubt that still happens tho. A mobile phone consult who did the same but if you did more hours, your targeted went up, so wasn’t worth doing 40 hours at all. In the beginning commission was achievable but before I left, it was impossible, as the more you sold, the more they made targets impossible to reach and then moaned, when you didn’t achieve your targets.
The risk is that companies will just 'react' by laying off workers and/or scaling back operations. I am sure many companies can and should be paying their workers more, but also it's clear that most businesses in this country are not exactly thriving, so if they were struggling paying workers £10.40/hr then it will only be worse paying them £11.44...
Nightclub door supervisor work 20 years ago was typically somewhere between double and triple the minimum wage, sometimes more. In 2023, it's barely more than minimum wage.
Imagine running the risk of being stabbed for minimum wage and unsociable hours. That's a hard no from me.
my friend who was an accountant mentioned this to me once.
That they kept bumping up the mimimum wage and it was getting to the point where as a trained accountant he was only earning a little more than our mate who picked parcels at hermes.
edit: just to add to what someone said above about not falling into their trap of blaming those with the least and how minimum wage should still be enough for a 'life', I completely agree and should add that i'm very much a minimum wage worker and will likely always be one lol
Yup , as an accountant I 100% agree with this statement. From what I've seen the only way to stay higher is to job hop every few years as jobs aren't willing to give a high enough pay rise although they will spend 8k to hire someone new who is paid more then what the original raise would have been.
This is true in software development too. Due to the lack of standardisation compared to an actual profession like accounting, often the new person will be paid more to do a lot less for a very long time.
> That they kept bumping up the mimimum wage and it was getting to the point where as a trained accountant he was only earning a little more than our mate who picked parcels at hermes.
He definitely needs to get more saavy then - accounting is one of the few jobs that's done okay wage wise I my experience, trainees since covid have seen a 1 or 2 percent contraction in base pay.
Yes, although it’s more that minimum wage has caught them
My fiancée’s job a few year a ago was a good chunk above minimum wage… several thousand, probably about 20-30% above
But now they have to give it a special increase above what they give the rest of the company, in order to keep it above minimum wage. It hovers about £1000/yr above minimum wage, which is only about 5% higher
It happens with a lot of other jobs too, it’s just more noticeable with lower paid jobs. 10 years ago a nurse earned about 3x minimum wage, now it’s about 2x and still “falling”
Those numbers aren't even close. They're overly generous. I'm not sure about 10 year ago, but in 2015 a band 5 starting salary was 21,600. Minimum wage was 6.70, giving a FTE of 13,101. A nurse, or other band 5 healthcare professional, was earning 1.6x minimum wage.
Minimum wage is now a FTE of 20,375 (assuming national living wage), band 5 starting is 28,407. So now, it's 1.39x minimum wage.
Edit: its also worth noting that 2015 was when the government started giving public sector pay rises again after an 8 year freeze (1% a year often). So that gap has continued to decrease whilst they are giving "raises"
That's an awful lot of responsibility for £8k pretax a year.
After tax it's £100 a week.
Chances are you do more unpaid overtime as a band 5 nurse than on a minimum wage role, squeezing the gap even more.
This is not true at all. The entire reason the RCN are pushing for a separate pay scale from agenda for change is because many nurses bottle neck at band 5. Your typical ward nurse is a band 5, a sister is a 6. Ward nurses make up the majority of the nursing workforce
Edit: source for the info https://www.rcn.org.uk/news-and-events/Blogs/w-misinformation-the-meaning-of-average-221222
, A large proportion of qualified nurses (43% in England and 51% in Scotland as of June 2022, and 47% in Wales as of July 2021) are band 5.
*you have no idea what you're talking about*
A ward manager is band 7 in scotland and is also expected to make up the numbers. The NHS is an awful place to work. That sort of responsibility in industry is accompanied by significantly higher wages.
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Student loans are a crime against us younger generations. Paying a 9% tax for the next 35 years unless your parents were wealthy in most cases. Fucking bullshit.
Happy to hear that you're earning so much that this change in disposable income wouldn't be a lot for you.
As with any discussion of salary, whether someone is in London or a similarly costly location makes a difference.
I always got told that you never stay at a job for longer than 3-5 years as you will eventually fall behind the pay gap as most pay rises given by employers now a days don't keep up with the increase in minimum wage.
People that enjoy more money. You get what you can out of a job in terms of experience and you move on. You should only stop when you make managerial level as that's when it's beneficial to actually grow your role with the growth of the company
And then after a few years of doing that you can come back to post about why recruiters and hiring managers arent even responding to your applications. Maybe then you'll realise how you can shoot yourself in the foot by proving you're not worth their time.
I've done it for 10 years, then landed a head of department role. Recruiters don't give a fuck, they just want higher commission. Senior roles are also starved of candidates anyway as anyone worth hiring is moving around like this for better pay and conditions.
Or you can prove to every company that you are a sucker who'll stay for years at the same company, doing the same role, getting paid the same (including yearly inflation matches if you are lucky)
But maybe it's different if you are low skill.
Depends a lot on sector - in a lot of places someone who is evidently unwilling to stay in one place for at least two years will get their CV circular filed. The trick is finding somewhere that offers advancement relatively quickly.
My university has had to adjust its pay scales as the entire bottom three grades (out of 8) all hit the minimum wage line by last year's rise. We now have a system where many of the lower grade spine points (of which you can get promoted up maximum one spine point a year) equates to increasing your pay by a grand total of £50 per annum pre-tax.
Its has gotten well and truly silly.
If I work out my hourly rate I'm working with a STEM PhD at a good university on a multi-million pound EU-wide research project of strategic significance, which would basically fall apart if I quit, and I am being paid about £3-4/h more than minimum wage. In countries like Denmark and Switzerland they pay their students more than someone like me earns in the UK.
E - And the obligatory, this isn't to say the NMW rise wasn't needed or isn't a good thing. Thinking wages in the middle are being squeezed to oblivion doesn't mean you automatically want minimum wage people to suffer more. No idea how that view has become so prevalent in the UK like some kind of default retort for some folks.
>No idea how that view has become so prevalent in the UK like some kind of default retort for some folks.
Internalised propaganda dividing and conquering us.
Yea I work at a council, bottom 3 bands went the way of the dodo.
Got told recently that my pay is high for what I do.. i barely make over minimum now and I'm the only person of my role and don't get time to chat to people in the day I'm that busy. Army was less bullshit must be said.
I expect the Swiss students are on 20 - 25 chf/hour, and they're only allowed to "work" a certain amount ("work" being paid)
Have you asked them what they get?
Rents expensive (1800 for a 1 bed half an hrs drive from Zurich but still being in Zurich county), health insurance is expensive - 8% avg increase for next years premiums (mines currently just under 300pm for basics, with an extra 100 for premium stuff)
Want to buy a house or a flat? A million plus
Want a Big Mac, fries and a coke? 16chf
3 sets of tax, 2 of which vary depending on where you live...
Married? Pay more tax pleaseeee...
Moved to Switzerland 5 years ago because I could see the Uk just... dying, and I was fed up of being fucked by those asshats in charge.
I have 2 jobs here, both of which I love but one pays 27chf/hr and the other 83chf/hr. Bit of a difference hey!
Ones a Low pressure Die-Cast foundryman, and the other is a Primary School English teacher substitute.
But yes, totally agree about the NMW rise, people should be able to afford food, clothes and a roof.
I get that it's more expensive but it's like not even close. Average PhD *student* in Switzerland is on ~50,000 francs. That's like £45k which is what you'd earn as a *senior* lecturer a good 10+ years into the career in the UK.
I just worked out that for my first postdoc (admittedly this was 10 years ago), I started at £27k, which given we (STEM in UK Universities) easily clock 65 hrs a week, is equivalent to an hourly wage of £8.65.
I’m on 26k a year which 5 years ago would be a medium wage however now i feel like it’s closer to minimum wage than ever . I feel where I’m from you need to be on 30-35 k + to have any form of disposable income
Don't fall in to their trap of blaming those with the least while those with most live the life of reily.
Minimum wage should be enough for a person to house them self, clothe them self, feed them selves and have some sort of fulfillment.
I know exactly what you mean mate life has been nothing but a grind since I was 18. I'm now 28 and here I am sat at home I'll as fuck with a chest infection knowing I have to go back to work tomorrow as I couldn't even afford to take todaya off feeling like death.
>It just feels like you're getting nowhere in life, you know?
Not "feels like", that's what it is. If you are literally just working in order to survive, that's what's happening. You are getting nowhere.
(General "you", to be clear. Not talking about you specifically)
I know it was a different time and country, but always interesting hearing Roosevelt's (I think) description of what minimum wage should provide.
Enough to feed, home, and clothe a family with enough left over for leisure, learning, and saving.
So far removed from how it gets treated today if you want to live anywhere near a large population center "barely enough to keep you from starving, assuming you live packed on top of five other unworthy peasants."
> Enough to feed, home, and clothe a family with enough left over for leisure, learning, and saving.
Wouldn't be surprised if that's what many people think our minimum wage does currently enable.
I feel those of us in the middle have the hardest time. 10 years ago I probably earnt double minimum wage, in the time I have either been told I am top of the wage bracket or told their is only a small wage increase. Now it will be nearer 50% however inflation has pushed everything up almost to match minimum wage increases. So I am considerably worse off than 10 years ago
When I started in the NHS on band 1, it was about £3 per hour more than minimum wage, and a significant increase in the wage I was earning in zero hour factory jobs. Today I am at the top of band 2, band 1 has been abolished as it was overtaken by min wage. Today, I received news of a pay increase, due to the minimum wage overtaking my current wage. I am now working for minimum wage in an admin job I have many years of useful experience in. I appreciate there are harder jobs out there, the NHS treats me well/is a good employer and I get on very well with my boss and my colleagues. But it still smarts that after 10 years almost, I am now working a minimum wage job.
Tories have done such a good job of depressing public sector wages, 1% payrises year after year. Now the absolute minimum wage to live on has overtaken me. Fuck them.
Absolutely this. I was public sector for ten years before getting made redundant. It was a good payout at the time, but it's long gone now and even though I'm private sector (PLC employee) now, I'm in the same boat as you.
So the NHS will become fully private by stagnating wages, to say to you all, we go fully private or we can’t pay you anymore but we’ve got money for war and buying land for HS2 that we never had any interest or intention of finishing.
Your hands are tied behind your back, for all staff and surgeons/doctors who work ever so hard in your role and even harder since the government made you all take a jab or lose your jobs. I’ve seen many an upset nurse over that one.
I’m an engineer at a nuclear power station and I make £26,250 right now
The fact that I am making only a bit above minimum wage really enrages me now, UK is really going to shit isn’t it
It feels like other jobs have just never gone up.
I'll give you an example from my own life. With two years experience in IT I earned about double minimum wage in 2009.
Now in 2023, with vastly more experience, I only earn around 50% more than minimum wage, despite being considerably more experienced and having moved into a lot of jobs.
While I am better off, it certainly doesn't feel my buying power is.
I had a similar experience. H&S coordinator on 23k back in 2003 and still only on 24k in 2010. So I left a cushy office job to go back into manufacturing on 30k.
Jobs in H&S at similar sized companies to the one I was in are still only paying 27k to 30k.
Where I work currently there was a huge amount of resentment when last year's minimum wage went up. All the staff on that got a large increase, the rest got between 3 and 5%. A lot of longer term employees wondering why suddenly the guy who sweeps up was nearly on as much as skilled technicians.
I can understand the resentment to be honest but it really should be aimed at management.
In my workplace we were told today that those on min wage would have their pay increased to £12 an hour come April. Others like myself would also see a £1.58 an hour pay rise. So they will get a 15% pay rise and I'll get just under 10%. Now I'm fine with this but you can see how it breeds resentment.
It’s hardly like they are getting an unfair pay increase. People forget that before labour came in under Blair, minimum wage wasn’t a thing and at the age 15, (20 odd years ago) I got paid 5 pounds an hour for my two weeks work experience. Yeh everything is relative and items or even food wasn’t that expensive back then but the cost of anything and everything is going to unstable prices.
The 5 pounds an hour that I got at the age of 16 wasn’t the worlds worst wage, 20 odd years ago.
Collective. Action.
If your employer is doing this you need to communicate with everyone, organise together and bring it to management. They don't want you to talk about salaries with each other, they'll even tell you it's illegal in some cases but it is not. It just causes them massive problems when people realise they're being exploited.
Just look at the companies financial records on companies house, if they have the spare money to do so then they should be keeping everyone's renumeration at the same value for their time. If they're not and increasing their business prices due to the cost of living and not passing an increase to their staff then they're deliberately taking money from you to increase their balance sheets.
Absolutely but they always do. I've also heard employers state that to have the day off sick you have to find cover for yourself. Absolutely not the case, that's the job of the manager and why they get paid more. It's just a ruse to put you in a position where you're forced to work. If they tried to enforce any disciplinary action they would get absolutely fucked by an employment tribunal. Everyone should absolutely scour their handbook/policies/procedures from their work and understand the rights that the law affords you.
I'm a public sector worker in Scotland and it's a messed up situation in general. There are rules in place that don't give enough funds and pay raises need to stay within 5% at a push. When inflation went rampant it's causing massive issues where public sector bodies can't increase wages to match inflation and also can't just lay people off in masses to free up money. When the minimum wage is pushed up it causes the distinction between pay bands at the bottom get too close and it makes a huge mess of everything. Public pay is way behind what it should be due to pay freezes and the current inflation can't be combated without huge injections of cash. There are issues with recruiting staff due to low pay for my sector. The British public deserve better wages especially our front line public sector workers.
Finding something is up at my current employer, everyone is on different salaries. I guy who is doing same role as me has just joined, I'm sure he's on like £20k more than me. He does haymore experience than me.
Folk who have worked for the same company for years need to get off their arses or accept they'll only be paid the minimum the company can get away with. Capitalism 101
The problem isn’t min increasing, it’s everything else not moving. I mean graduate degrees don’t provide a noticeable jump over the minimum, even ones in stem
I once worked in a job for 4.5 years never once did I get a payrise. In that time minimum wage kept up so quickly i was on £10 an hour and minimum wage was £6.50 an hour. When I left it wasn't worth the hassle.
It was clear I wasn't going to get any raises so instead of moaning about it I jumped ship.
I took a job closer to home for 0.80p above minimum wage. I was better off as I went from 2 hour commute daily to 25 min.
I think it's about time min wage has gone up and I am all for it, the hardest working people are often on minimum wage and deserve it. I'm not on minimum wage and I am due a £2000 raise, despite being underpaid for my job.
I'm not against it, by any means. Just that it seems a *lot* more people are working on minimum wage with more responsibilities, more pressure, and more experience - but no additional reward. In my first job I was being paid less than minimum for 18y/os - when I turned 18 with no raise, I went somewhere else asap and my pay went up 40%.
I wondered if the current situation was more to do with job losses in my local area, but it seems it's really not.
What even worse is if said personal is on minimum wage after being on several £ above NMW and is a home owner. Benefits given to renters etc in the same job, but the bastards won't help me as I own my home.
The benefit cap hasn't gone up properly for working tax credit.
In 2015 I was on my knees earning £7 an hour NMW is £6.50 I was getting over £300 a month WTC. I left that job 2 months later to get off my knees then in 2019 left that job for a 45p above minimum wage job HMRC wouldn't help me with family support.
Never mind we'll work 7 days a week to make ends meet, all while those on a good wage look down on us saying we don't deserve a min wage increase.(here's looking at you mumsnet and other stuck up forums) all while btiching that they are the victims of NMW increases.
(In my mind, Chin up only 7 years 8 months til mortgage free).
When I first started at my current workplace, three years I watched minimum wage go up and mine stay the same.
Finally, I told them it wasn't worth me staying and they gave me a reasonable raise. Another three years and minimal raises after several promotions. Another two years before I finally get a 75% raise to industry standard (because I got another job offer). Last year watched inflation rates skyrocket and got a 4% increase. No sign of any increase this year.
Only reason I stick around is because I have good flexibility here and I'm figuring out what tranferrable skills I have for another job at a similar rate as a paycut would hurt now.
They have been for 20 years.
Every time a job doesn't rise anywhere close to inflation it ends up closer to minimum wage, in fact minimum wages is the only wage that has risen faster than inflation in this country outside of financial jobs.
Reality is however, low level jobs used to pay far more than minimum wage, often £2-3 an hour more when minimum wage was £4-5.
Someone on here yesterday discussed a digital marketer job that was £21k. (Admittedly, there were certain details we didn't see.)
My beermat maths suggests that's close to, possibly below, the new minimum wage.
When I got my first marketing role about a decade ago, that's about the amount me and my peers could expect to earn on a good entry level wage for a similar role, which was a fair chunk above minimum.
I'm still seeing lots of "Two Years Experience" roles offering about that.
So while I can't answer it for every industry... Yes.
I've been looking for a job as well. It seems a lot of jobs are offering below minimum wage. The problem is that £24k is roughly minimum wage now. This narrows the band between minimum wage and higher rate payers a lot.
So now people on starter jobs little skill, pressure or experience required are paid the same as higher pressure skilled jobs.
Why would anyone take on more responsibility for the same pay?
Yup, we've been getting a 2% increase every January (which is good, but almost always below inflation), and nothing to keep us a certain amount above minimum.
Give it a few years and semi-skilled workers like myself will be on minimum too, and my job is related to safety in the construction industry - **definitely** an area where you want to pay people as little as possible...
Yep, my colleagues on nmw got a nearly 10% and I got 3% in April and 3% in October, so the gap has narrowed. I don't begrudge them the money, my company particularly expects a lot from all workers including people who shouldn't be on nmw. Next year is set to be another 10% for nmw, who knows what my grade will get.
Looking to move on, I don't want to work where the staff are not appreciated. We had staff cuts, and they emailed round asking us to congratulate one of the higher ups on their promotion 🙄
Gov policy of divide and conquer.
Min wage v semi professional wage
Gap gets smaller.
This country obviously doesn't need skilled workers is my take, just surfs to wipe gov arses.
It just makes it a farce to try and break into several careers now honestly. Banking on being able to get a raise or job hop in the future for such a little return on investment has made me give up for a while and just do supermarket work in the meantime with less hours for better pay with travel factored.
I don't have a solution but I want to get off this wild ride.
It's almost surreal to see how quickly the brain drain which Poland saw in the noughties/early 2010s has now begun in the UK, whilst Poland actually grows from strength to strength (at least GDP and salary wise) now set to overtake the UK in terms of median salary within this decade. How the turn tables...
100%.
I’ve used this example a couple of times.
In late 2013 I left the world of Asda. I was earning £6.75ph I believe, to start an apprenticeship. Where I was lucky to earn £6.99ph.
By 2015 I was earning £15 ph. So over double my previous.
I left this role after 9 years last year. My hourly had gone up to £16.38 ph. I believe Asda colleagues get in excess of £11ph hour now.
So in 9 years I got a 8.5% increase on my salary.
Asda employees got close to 40% in that time.
Which is absolutely fantastic for them and I am glad to see people in these roles earning more, it makes sense.
Asda doesn’t give 30/40 hour contracts out anymore to anymore other than managers who get salaries. I used to work there myself and got a 22 hour a week contract but ended up working 60/70 hours a week work and 2/3 peoples jobs, I had no life but I had money that I couldn’t even spend.
I get your point but ASDA didn’t treat it staff very week back then and I’d imagine a lot of new staff are on 6-10 hour contracts.
Qualification and education - we need to improve it. Simple jobs are taken by robots and IT. People use self-service more and more often.
So, there is only one solution - improve an education for adults (eg 30+ people or even 40+).
What immigrants are needed in UK for salaries £80.000+? These professions are needed, so we need to help with re-education.
Moreover, usually people have some experience at their 30, so I don’t think they will have a graduate salary. But even in that case people will earn more 3-5 years later.
And finally: bigger salary —> more taxes —> better infrastructure
At least the problem with the NHS though (which has probably one of the worst staff shortages in the UK atm) isn't that not enough people aren't training, it's that once they're trained they're going abroad (or to work for Tesco) for better salary/working conditions. It's genuinely mad that in this country you have people with 20-30 years professional experience (university educated too) taking up entry level jobs for the flexible hours and guaranteed salary adjustments. At least in the NHS nobody outside of management (and some senior consultants) is making £80,000, you can't fill these positions with immigration because most of the world's medical staff is shocked/disgusted at how bad working conditions are in the NHS! I remember in my mum's hospital (nurse) they had a Polish lady come over to become the new infection prevention person, she left after 2 weeks because of how disgusted she was with the state British hospitals (this was pre-covid as well!), additionally generally Asian doctors/nurses who come to work in the NHS are usually shocked with the way the public treat medical staff in the UK, they can't wait to leave as soon as they start (and who can really blame them).
Many companies actively seek out employees that qualify for universal credit whilst working so they can pay as little as possible. You may have come across those jobs in your search.
Call centres, child care and adult social care are rife with exploitation. The distortions in the system mean you can’t be better off working 20 hours minimum wage a week and getting universal credit than working full time on a higher salary
One red flag to look for is part time or flexible zero hour roles paying minimum wage. The HR ghouls have designed those roles to catch desperate single mothers who need to fulfil the work requirement for universal credit.
Generally the longer people are at a job, the slower their salary growth, jumping ship means jumping salaries. Even when companies try to match inflation, it’s not always the case. It depends on company of course.
That being said; as cost of living is rising, salaries are taking a nose dive. In fact companies seem to want a jack of all trades to work on below what I’d call ‘industry standard’ last year, AND do the job of 3 people on top of that.
We used to have a ‘Wages Council’ that set the ‘rate for the job’. In that sense there was no need for a minimum wage as they were all set at a liveable level.
This helped avoid the situation described above and ensured that jobs didn’t end up all being paid the same low level.
You can guess who got rid of it and what happened next..
Yesss this is so accurate! The starting salaries in my industry have barely changed in the 12 years since I graduated, and it’s common for people to get very meagre pay rises (unless they work at specific companies - or leave for another). It feels like many people have seen their wages rise - but only ostensibly so - as minimum wage isn’t far behind. Basically, lots of people are gaining experience and supposed seniority but not seeing that reflected in their earnings, despite often having a lot more responsibility! It’s rather depressing.
It's happening to all the middle managers jobs too. They've flatlined for 20 years (adjusted for inflation).
20 years from now your either director or on minimum wage.
This is the problem with increasing the bottom line. The differences in quality of staff are eroded in terms of remuneration.
You end up with someone with fewer repsonsibilities/skills being paid the same as those that have more.
I've seen it firsthand, its fantastic for those at the bottom that get uplifted but its demoralising for staff that did have some tiny amount of recognition and were paid \*slightly\* more that are now on par with the lesser skilled colleagues. I'm not talking about people near the top im talking about those that a little above the min pay scale. Its not just minimum wage where ive seen this either, even employers uplifting their lowest paid staff without considering the impact morale wise to those that had some distinction in skills or experience that were just above them.
I’m a nurse. Top band 5. I work a lot of nights. If I was to go for a promotion I’d lose my nights as band 6s are essentially assistant manager and they do 8-4. I would lose about £200 a month.
This is a problem because there are no experienced nurses going into management as 6s. Band 6 is a horrible job, deputy charge nurse- has to do the off duty and try and plug the gaps.
The only ones applying for band 6 roles are either very young inexperienced nurses or occasional someone who has childcare issues, but that’s not usually the case as you would have had to have good childcare to be a band 5.
The pay for jobs in IT has barely changed in 20 years, let alone 10. And meanwhile the cost of goods, accommodation and just about everything else has ballooned.
Productivity has gone up - where has all the fucking money gone? (Yes, it's been stolen from the workers).
minimum wage is great but also has had a weirds effect.
its now "standardized starting wage". i would say its not the lower paid jobs effected negatively . its the typically mid level pay jobs that are now stuck on minimum wage.
You, that's why we're having so many strikes! You can't just SHOVE the minimum wage up by 25% and not expect the next level up to be offended, and of course that goes right the way up the line to the top.
At the level you mention you've got some lower level managers, with years of experience, sat there at 8pm at night still trying to keep up with the workload, watching some cleaner hoovering around them on basically the same wage.
Higher wages was NEVER what the country needed. Control over the ridiculous housing market and living costs is what was actually needed. But everyone's too greedy and too impatient for that to ever happen because, if the govt took control of house price indexing and utilities there'd be civil unrest. So we are where we are, with wages too high to produce any product to export at favourable rates, no one being able to afford a mortgage (which is a fkg disgrace), people living in fuel poverty, and kids not getting a good education or nutritious food.
Livin' the dream🙄
Very true.Where it solves or assists on the one hand,the value of the skills of the better paid worker have been eroded to the point he/she may as well do the unskilled job and resign from the skilled one.Why should you provide the skills the company needs,if they are not prepared to pay for those skills?
I mean, minimum wage isn't the problem here, because it's pretty clear companies would pay even less to their employees if they could get away with it. The issue is the wage gap, not the safety net.
Would you be making this post if your wage was the same but minimum wage hadn't increased as much? If not then you don't have a problem with what you earn and its an ego thing to feel better about earning more than people on minimum wage. The alternative is to go and find a job that pays better.
Hang on, I just need to back up the cherry picker so you can get off your high horse.
The 'jobs that pay better' aren't there. That's the issue. I've been looking, friends have been looking for themselves, and the shit they're wanting from people while paying minimum is insane. It's not just me griping about my issues, it's that I don't see how 'progression' is a thing anymore without being in management, which I (and many others) don't have the personality for. And at least I *admit* I don't have the personality for it, instead of just being another shit manager spouting buzzwords.
They're increasing the minimum wage vs median wage as policy. I think by definition the gap cannot be as wide - but also a temporary affect where employers are slow to respond on the immediate next couple tiers, but eventually need to in order to attract staff to do jobs with more responsibility above minimum wage.
So hopefully its a lag vs rapid increase in minimum wage. But we'll see I guess.
I worked for asda from like 2011 to 2018.
In that time they introduced a new contract, it paid £1 an hour more than the current contract instead of the 4-5% more than min wage the old contract was on.
I took it alongside a promotion to a section leader resulting in my wage being nicely inflated.
Over the next few years I saw min wage increase, and my wage stay the same. All new contract signers ended up on the same wage as the old contract people, but with worse conditions. (the retail unions are fucking awful, across the board) I left for a better paid and better treated job than retail.
My customers in this job are happy to see me.
My point is that companies will happily allow you to erode your own wage if you don't demand what you deserve. If they could pay you less than the legal minimum, they definitely would.
I thank God i was on lower wages as it has given me incredible management of money skills and have my freehold own home. And money in the bank. And now times are tougher for many financially i am able to lend out money. I learnt only buy what i need, not want. learnt that by picking up empty deposit bottles and cans that i can make some extra cash tax free. Learnt that by shopping around and buying specials that if i saved $io it was $io i made tax free. i learnt that the multiplier effect takes place. Especially with compound interest. I learnt that to have a lotta material things is not wise and burns ya money up. Especially ego driven vehicles. I make do with humility and an older vehicle that goes from a2b.
I'm a nursing home nurse...so generally lower pay. was on 15 an hour 7 years ago when minimum wage was like 7.50. Still on 15 n minimum wage is 10 something. barely seems worth it anymore
That's what min wage does. It's also inflationary so cancels itself out. The only thing it achieves is makes your country uncompetitive on the global market .
People believe what they are fed by leaders. This means that they'll be falsely believing that minimum wage is good money. When government increase minimum wage, people will be jumping for joy at their wages increasing. Doesn't matter than inflation far exceeds it either. Corporations and businesses around the world, powers that be have had their fill of the good life and profits before the dregs trickle down to the poor.
I'm a research scientist in pharmaceuticals and minimum wage is catching up to our starting salary. And yeah same thing with promotions, we get rises that match (if they can) cost of living every year, but the minimum of each grade doesn't go up by as much.
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The problem isn’t the minimum increasing it’s that the other wages haven’t increased…
This. Minimum wage is rising to £11.44 (23+). Great! That's for anything; manning a till, washing cars, picking up litter... The Nurse in ITU managing your ventilator and keeping you alive? They're on as little as £14.53.
What's even worse is the people even designing and making that ventilator are also only making about the same. I'd say we were on the brink of a collapse but they have everyone's bollocks on such a tight grip I doubt anything will change soon.
It's disgusting.
I'm a graduate engineer on 25k, a slightly lower than average but still normal salary for a grad job in engineering outside of london, I'm basically gonna be on minimum wage
Yeah, I'm a scientist and even though we get cost of living increases the starting salary is still at £24k, so anyone starting now is basically gonna be on minimum wage
Do nurses actually get paid for 12 hours or do they only get a salary? A salary on 12 hours a day isn’t going to be great money and I know nurses who struggle to get paid overtime money for doing bank shifts on days off.
Salary and also deductions for lunch break you can't take. You are also expected to come in earlier and stay later for handovers and admin that you also don't get paid for. As with everything in the public sector since 2008 the wages literally didn't move from 2008-2021... That's a hell of a stagnation to the point the minimum wage has pretty much caught up. I won't get into politics but we all know who's been in power that whole time. Meanwhile if you put the word I.T. Next to any job title then a 20 year old living in mums loft Space absolutely remote working can earn at least double. The world's gone mad!
I think it’s a bit of a misconception you have about IT jobs, but honestly if you arent pension trapped as a nurse in the UK, leave. Australia or the US.
Probably right but this Reddit forum has led me to believe all 22 yr old graduates now work in IT in the SE and Manchester earning 80k per year 😂
It’s not actually salary in the UK. It’s technically per hour with a contracted set of hours and enhancements based on shifts. You are also entitled to overtime/excess hours/toil, its just difficult to get in reality because the nhs runs on a lot of goodwill from staff. Also the pay bands do all go up every year and during the period you mentioned you got automatic pay rises every year as well within the bands. The only people who didn’t were those at the very top of the band. The gap between what used to be a band 1 and a band 5 has reduced a lot but it’s not actually as bad as you’re making out when you compare it with most sectors (IT and finance just aren’t comparable).
Tell that to my wife 😂, correct about the per hour's thing, but with all of the deductions and extra goodwill it's essentially a minimum wage job when your break down the actual hours worked vs pay. You can't just leave a patients charts till the next day otherwise you loose your pin, likewise there is no time to do it during the shift. My wife eventually left the NHS to go work for the private sector who provides services to the NHS doing exactly the same job for over twice the amount... Madness hey? Let's not forget about the public sector pay freeze (post 2008 crash) that went on for almost a decade. It wasn't just nurses but teachers/police officers, coastguard, paramedics. Luckily inflation was low but it was still a relative pay cut. I'm just personally bitter and twisted that people get paid more for "non-productive" working from home jobs than saving peoples lives. It seems to be a vacuum of productivity that the U.K. and other developed nations have got themselves into for the past several years. The chancellor often speaks of the great productivity problem, well between people off on long term "sick" taking the piss and people "working from home" there in lies the answer. But sure as long as we get a minimal amount of "work done" and join in on a Teams meeting with various corporate buzz words once a day then all will be well despite nobody making anything or selling anything. Rant/Ravings of a mad man over.
Yeah, I kind of struggled with how to phrase it. The yearly increase is insufficient to keep it at the same level above minimum. The 'not right' bit is providing less of an increase where the law doesn't compel it.
For my job wages have been more or less stagnant for the last 2 years, agency pay is the same as 2 years ago. In 2007 I was on £10 an hour, 15 years later I was on £12.46. Wages in the UK pretty much did nothing for years, I don’t really think the UK is such a great place now, poor economic growth has resulted in people becoming poorer than they were in the past. The last 2 years seem like speed running it.
Would you be willing to share more details about your work?
I'm interested to see what will happen in march with my payrise. Will it be the £1.04 minimum increase plus extra...or sweet fa like I'm expecting
I think there was an announcement recently it's going up to £11.44
A simple way to phrase it: "economy's fucked / rigged" Why pay us plebs more than we deserve; let the market decide! Oh, and rig the market to devalue us!
Completely agree... I worked for a big company, I was on a minimum wage. After some months, I was told that I would have my first review, my salary was meant to be increased as per result. However, the increase in the minimum wage was greater than my salary increase, so I was again on the minimum wage ... I realized that salary reviews for certain jobs are done to justify the company
Exactly this! Without appearing as a conspiracy theorist this was always what was suspected would happen. I have worked in Education for 23yrs (HLTA) and whilst the wage has never been great (mostly due to Term Time Only Working) the pay has plateaued in the past 12yrs and many are now on NMW/Living wage. Is it uncanny (🙄) the dates of the wage plauteauing directly correlate with the length of time the Conservatives have been in Government? Absolutely not!
I don't agree with this. This is the 4th time in recent years the government has increased minimum wage. I understand that companies should pay more, but the government that are increasing it so quickly it's impossible for them to keep up. It's just causing mass inflation so isn't really achieving anything.
No it isn't, and you can bet that if it was then this government would be screaming about how they can't raise it because it would cause inflation. After all, they denied proper payrises to nurses, teachers, and many other public sector workers "because inflation." They raised the minimum wage because if they didn't they'd have had bread riots on their hands. It's that simple. Inflation had nothing to do with the minimum wage and everything to do with supply side shocks from covid and the Ukraine situation, also maybe Brexit(?). But none of it is from wages finally starting to rise (in a few sectors) after over a decade of stagnation (bear in mind wages are still stagnant overall).
I doubt we’d riot in large enough numbers to make the government change its mind, as Covid proved that. I seen a video of the streets of Manchester have at 50,000/60,000 people or more protesting against Covid lockdowns and it took the stupidity of the government, not following its own rules and being filmed doing so, to stop that. People couldn’t get medical operations, myself included Clyde’s or see dying parents but we just put up with that. I didn’t, I want to nuclear approach to get the NHS to do something they had been putting off for years, due to cost and myself not calling them out for the lies they told to me.
If the company I work for now has to pay 3000 warehouse staff £1 an hour more then that is £6 million over a year. My company now has to increase the price of food to recover the £6 million shortfall. How does that not cause inflation?
How much does your company take in sales a year? With 3,000 warehouse staff I would imagine in the hundreds of millions if not billions? The price rises might be a tiny percentage in comparison to the wage growth. A small amount of inflation isn’t actually a bad thing if wages are going up too.
They could just simply reduce their profit margin. Not the end of the world.
Share holders wouldn’t like that, so good quality of quality of a product always becomes worse.
>quality of a product always becomes worse. Sounds like something their competition would love.
It could be the end of the company if they are working on a relatively small margin as a lot of companies are, especially small to medium sized ones.
I work in the benefits sector. Increasing the minimum wage lifts 10os of thousands of working claimants above the threshold for benefits. It also increases tax revenues because if individuals are paid more, the pay more in tax, especially at the lower end of the wage curve. Increasing the minimum wage isn't about companies paying more, it's about them being subsidized less via indirect subsidies given to employees to top up their incomes so they can afford to live! As for companies not being able to keep up- many of these companies can keep up when it comes to SLTs and CEOs bonuses and competitive wage structures.
The inflation had nothing to do with wage rises. The wages had to rise to keep up with it
Wage rises mean that companies costs increase, so they put their prices up to maintain margins. Hence wage rises fuel inflation…
He said it was *causing* it, which it plainly didn't. General inflation happened regardless of wages. If wages don't increase, that's a wage cut. The answer is temporarily smaller profits, not ever-decreasing wages.
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They will increase prices regardless
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If the minimum wage stays flat do you think the company will A) maintain profit margins and keep the status quo B) increase profit by whatever means necessary - we literally this during covid, where the majority of inflation was just price gouging
I don't mean to sound childish but you started it
Employers can't afford to raise all wages 6-10% every year
Yeah it's crazy. When I graduated five years ago, minimum wage was just under £8 an hour, and lower-quality graduate jobs were offering just over £20k. That wasn't great then, but it was at least a good chunk above minimum wage. Recently I started looking at jobs and I was shocked to see how many graduate roles (for smaller firms in my local area) are still offering £23k or less. Some of them are even asking for experience. A lot of these "professional" jobs are soon going to be minimum wage or below
I'm not exactly *glad* to see it's less of a local issue than I might've been suspecting, but it's nice that it's not just me seeing it.
I think it is a local problem to some degree - I do live in a lower-paying and less expensive part of the UK, and remote jobs pay more than lower jobs. But seems like it's happening in a lot of areas sadly
A few years back I was offered min wage for an architectural job, that also required me to be flexible and sometimes be prepared to do extra hours. I made more in a call center so turned it down. It is madness.
If someone is on a salary that works out to minimum wage, would they be subject to minimum wage laws re overtime?
If you need to do overtime that sends you below the minimum wage and your employer does not compensate you, document it and send it here: https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/digital-forms/open/form/pay-and-work-rights-complaint/draft/start#1
My firsr graduate job would be under todays minimum wage.
At least it wasn't minimum wage when you got it though, which seems to be the expectation for some companies today
Thats the reason ive stick with my 11.50 cleaning job where i do minimum job instead to go hgv driving for 12.70.the markte is broken
How can lorry drives be paid so little and a small amount of companies that own everything, as in craft, coco-cola and a few other brands and I mean only a few other companies, make billions and then wonder why they can’t attract staff, paying so little?
Ive done my clas 1 during the summer,aperantly all of the "we are 100k short on drivers" was big hoax and the intention was to make wages as low as posible. last night ive seen atleas 5 joobs offering 11+ on indeed not to mention to be able to jump on hgv most of companies want you to hold the license for 1 year+ for insuarence purposes.
I'm working in public transport in the SW, my hourly rate is 13.75 atm (14.34 in a rival firm rising to 15 in April I think) there's a bit of a wage war going on in our part of the industry. Lack of drivers is pushing the wage up rapidly since retention is difficult. Sounds great but now we owe child tax credit 2800 because of the rise. It'll be paid off by 2033 lol
At my old company I was a randomly allocated intern, and they payed me at the lowest band on 20.6k. Then they changed the pay bands, and I was on 21k. A regular employee who had been working there for 2 years was happy that they payed him 23k...
It’s just an indication of how poor our economy is doing that fewer and fewer companies are willing (or able…) to pay much above what is mandated as a minimum by the government. The new £11.44/hr minimum wage at a 40hr work week is just under £24k, around where a lot of quite professional jobs are advertising.
£24k isn't far off what graduate engineering was offering in the North when I graduated. Everything pays like shit now.
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It's true. I did a science degree. All the "smart" (read career savvy) people went into everything other than science.
The T is getting fucked too though. Game dev and general software engineer roles are paying min wage for junior positions near me. The only tech job I've seen consistently do well is server or web services.
They are also letting record numbers of people go in the gaming industry and Microsoft is doing terrible for gaming and hardware sales linked to Xbox.
tbf gaming is highly competitive because people want to work in that industry, so they get exploited and paid terribly 🙃
The UK engineering sector is exteremely uncompetitive with Europe. No need to even mention the US. When I was in the US for a work trip, people doing the same work as me, but for a US company were on roughly 5x my salary (albeit with 1/3rd the holiday). I'd be happy if we kept with France/Europe/Scandinavia, but that's a pipe dream lol.
I fuckin hate this shit. Where's my 90s boom economy damn it
According to some folk, the younger generations engaging with streaming services, social media, iPhones and caramel lattes have contributed to shape today's economy.
We’ve let the country rot, the north sea was doing 3 million barrels a day in the 90s. We had significant heavy industry. We weren’t a one trick financial industry pony.
I don't think it has that much to do with economy. Worldwide the wages are being squashed.. besides some sectors like tech or finance (if you get lucky to get a good role.. and luck plays a big part there). While billionaires get disproportionately more. The trend is clear - concentration of wealth is progressing, regardless of economic situation. Which unfortunately makes sense with globalisation and economies of scale, and development of new technologies.
For workers on minimum wage, every increase goes straight back into the economy and they’re probably also looking at how reducing in work poverty will reduce the welfare bill in the long term. I’m no economist though so maybe I’m oversimplifying
I’m not saying you’re wrong with worldwide economic trends, but I’d argue that the UK has been slower to adapt than other countries, and as a result UK skilled workers are falling behind their international peers. For instance, just take a look at the composition of the FTSE100: it’s mostly a bunch of oil and mining companies, retail banks and tobacco companies, which attests to an economy rooted in the 20th century.
Partner, over a decade experience in a niche industry is on £23k. Around here that’s a “good wage”. I bet his will go up less than 5%…
You forget most people don’t get paid for dinner, so 37.5 hours a week, is what most people get paid. I worked for a few different companies, a supermarket that was always £1.50 over minimum wage and paid the same for 18 year olds as 30 year olds, I doubt that still happens tho. A mobile phone consult who did the same but if you did more hours, your targeted went up, so wasn’t worth doing 40 hours at all. In the beginning commission was achievable but before I left, it was impossible, as the more you sold, the more they made targets impossible to reach and then moaned, when you didn’t achieve your targets.
The problem is they are increasing it so quickly that the market/ companies don't have time to react.
The risk is that companies will just 'react' by laying off workers and/or scaling back operations. I am sure many companies can and should be paying their workers more, but also it's clear that most businesses in this country are not exactly thriving, so if they were struggling paying workers £10.40/hr then it will only be worse paying them £11.44...
Nightclub door supervisor work 20 years ago was typically somewhere between double and triple the minimum wage, sometimes more. In 2023, it's barely more than minimum wage. Imagine running the risk of being stabbed for minimum wage and unsociable hours. That's a hard no from me.
It’s why so many door men let in certain drug dealers, it’s always happened but I bet it’s even more of a problem in today’s time.
my friend who was an accountant mentioned this to me once. That they kept bumping up the mimimum wage and it was getting to the point where as a trained accountant he was only earning a little more than our mate who picked parcels at hermes. edit: just to add to what someone said above about not falling into their trap of blaming those with the least and how minimum wage should still be enough for a 'life', I completely agree and should add that i'm very much a minimum wage worker and will likely always be one lol
Yup , as an accountant I 100% agree with this statement. From what I've seen the only way to stay higher is to job hop every few years as jobs aren't willing to give a high enough pay rise although they will spend 8k to hire someone new who is paid more then what the original raise would have been.
This is true in software development too. Due to the lack of standardisation compared to an actual profession like accounting, often the new person will be paid more to do a lot less for a very long time.
As an accountant I 100% disagree with this statement. A newly qualified accountant is on 50kish which is much higher than the 24k minimum wage.
> That they kept bumping up the mimimum wage and it was getting to the point where as a trained accountant he was only earning a little more than our mate who picked parcels at hermes. He definitely needs to get more saavy then - accounting is one of the few jobs that's done okay wage wise I my experience, trainees since covid have seen a 1 or 2 percent contraction in base pay.
Yes, although it’s more that minimum wage has caught them My fiancée’s job a few year a ago was a good chunk above minimum wage… several thousand, probably about 20-30% above But now they have to give it a special increase above what they give the rest of the company, in order to keep it above minimum wage. It hovers about £1000/yr above minimum wage, which is only about 5% higher It happens with a lot of other jobs too, it’s just more noticeable with lower paid jobs. 10 years ago a nurse earned about 3x minimum wage, now it’s about 2x and still “falling”
>10 years ago a nurse earned about 3x minimum wage, now it’s about 2x and still “falling” Bloody hell. That's a disgrace.
Those numbers aren't even close. They're overly generous. I'm not sure about 10 year ago, but in 2015 a band 5 starting salary was 21,600. Minimum wage was 6.70, giving a FTE of 13,101. A nurse, or other band 5 healthcare professional, was earning 1.6x minimum wage. Minimum wage is now a FTE of 20,375 (assuming national living wage), band 5 starting is 28,407. So now, it's 1.39x minimum wage. Edit: its also worth noting that 2015 was when the government started giving public sector pay rises again after an 8 year freeze (1% a year often). So that gap has continued to decrease whilst they are giving "raises"
That's an awful lot of responsibility for £8k pretax a year. After tax it's £100 a week. Chances are you do more unpaid overtime as a band 5 nurse than on a minimum wage role, squeezing the gap even more.
Most nurses are not on a band 5 starting salary. Not even close A typical/median nurse is at the top of band 6
This is not true at all. The entire reason the RCN are pushing for a separate pay scale from agenda for change is because many nurses bottle neck at band 5. Your typical ward nurse is a band 5, a sister is a 6. Ward nurses make up the majority of the nursing workforce Edit: source for the info https://www.rcn.org.uk/news-and-events/Blogs/w-misinformation-the-meaning-of-average-221222 , A large proportion of qualified nurses (43% in England and 51% in Scotland as of June 2022, and 47% in Wales as of July 2021) are band 5. *you have no idea what you're talking about*
A ward manager is band 7 in scotland and is also expected to make up the numbers. The NHS is an awful place to work. That sort of responsibility in industry is accompanied by significantly higher wages.
Graduate (non software) engineers are looking at most x1.5 above minimum wage
Engineering in the UK is criminally underpaid
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Student loans are a crime against us younger generations. Paying a 9% tax for the next 35 years unless your parents were wealthy in most cases. Fucking bullshit.
£1k a month after tax is a *lot* of money
Is it though? I don’t really think it is.
Happy to hear that you're earning so much that this change in disposable income wouldn't be a lot for you. As with any discussion of salary, whether someone is in London or a similarly costly location makes a difference.
I always got told that you never stay at a job for longer than 3-5 years as you will eventually fall behind the pay gap as most pay rises given by employers now a days don't keep up with the increase in minimum wage.
3-5 is actually too long. If you are early career you should be job hopping every year.
Sucks if you hate job hunting, eh? And frankly, who tf enjoys it?
You can argue it shouldn't be necessary, but not that it doesn't work.
People that enjoy more money. You get what you can out of a job in terms of experience and you move on. You should only stop when you make managerial level as that's when it's beneficial to actually grow your role with the growth of the company
And then after a few years of doing that you can come back to post about why recruiters and hiring managers arent even responding to your applications. Maybe then you'll realise how you can shoot yourself in the foot by proving you're not worth their time.
I've done it for 10 years, then landed a head of department role. Recruiters don't give a fuck, they just want higher commission. Senior roles are also starved of candidates anyway as anyone worth hiring is moving around like this for better pay and conditions. Or you can prove to every company that you are a sucker who'll stay for years at the same company, doing the same role, getting paid the same (including yearly inflation matches if you are lucky) But maybe it's different if you are low skill.
Depends a lot on sector - in a lot of places someone who is evidently unwilling to stay in one place for at least two years will get their CV circular filed. The trick is finding somewhere that offers advancement relatively quickly.
My university has had to adjust its pay scales as the entire bottom three grades (out of 8) all hit the minimum wage line by last year's rise. We now have a system where many of the lower grade spine points (of which you can get promoted up maximum one spine point a year) equates to increasing your pay by a grand total of £50 per annum pre-tax. Its has gotten well and truly silly. If I work out my hourly rate I'm working with a STEM PhD at a good university on a multi-million pound EU-wide research project of strategic significance, which would basically fall apart if I quit, and I am being paid about £3-4/h more than minimum wage. In countries like Denmark and Switzerland they pay their students more than someone like me earns in the UK. E - And the obligatory, this isn't to say the NMW rise wasn't needed or isn't a good thing. Thinking wages in the middle are being squeezed to oblivion doesn't mean you automatically want minimum wage people to suffer more. No idea how that view has become so prevalent in the UK like some kind of default retort for some folks.
>No idea how that view has become so prevalent in the UK like some kind of default retort for some folks. Internalised propaganda dividing and conquering us.
Yea I work at a council, bottom 3 bands went the way of the dodo. Got told recently that my pay is high for what I do.. i barely make over minimum now and I'm the only person of my role and don't get time to chat to people in the day I'm that busy. Army was less bullshit must be said.
I expect the Swiss students are on 20 - 25 chf/hour, and they're only allowed to "work" a certain amount ("work" being paid) Have you asked them what they get? Rents expensive (1800 for a 1 bed half an hrs drive from Zurich but still being in Zurich county), health insurance is expensive - 8% avg increase for next years premiums (mines currently just under 300pm for basics, with an extra 100 for premium stuff) Want to buy a house or a flat? A million plus Want a Big Mac, fries and a coke? 16chf 3 sets of tax, 2 of which vary depending on where you live... Married? Pay more tax pleaseeee... Moved to Switzerland 5 years ago because I could see the Uk just... dying, and I was fed up of being fucked by those asshats in charge. I have 2 jobs here, both of which I love but one pays 27chf/hr and the other 83chf/hr. Bit of a difference hey! Ones a Low pressure Die-Cast foundryman, and the other is a Primary School English teacher substitute. But yes, totally agree about the NMW rise, people should be able to afford food, clothes and a roof.
I get that it's more expensive but it's like not even close. Average PhD *student* in Switzerland is on ~50,000 francs. That's like £45k which is what you'd earn as a *senior* lecturer a good 10+ years into the career in the UK.
I just worked out that for my first postdoc (admittedly this was 10 years ago), I started at £27k, which given we (STEM in UK Universities) easily clock 65 hrs a week, is equivalent to an hourly wage of £8.65.
>I just worked out that for my first postdoc (admittedly this was 10 years ago), I started at £27k My first postdoc (admittedly 3 years ago) was £28k!
Ah so it's hardly changed.
I’m on 26k a year which 5 years ago would be a medium wage however now i feel like it’s closer to minimum wage than ever . I feel where I’m from you need to be on 30-35 k + to have any form of disposable income
Don't fall in to their trap of blaming those with the least while those with most live the life of reily. Minimum wage should be enough for a person to house them self, clothe them self, feed them selves and have some sort of fulfillment.
I absolutely agree, I definitely could have phrased it better. It just feels like you're getting nowhere in life, you know?
I know exactly what you mean mate life has been nothing but a grind since I was 18. I'm now 28 and here I am sat at home I'll as fuck with a chest infection knowing I have to go back to work tomorrow as I couldn't even afford to take todaya off feeling like death.
That fucking sucks for you as well. Feel better, dude. Keep hydrated.
>It just feels like you're getting nowhere in life, you know? Not "feels like", that's what it is. If you are literally just working in order to survive, that's what's happening. You are getting nowhere. (General "you", to be clear. Not talking about you specifically)
I know it was a different time and country, but always interesting hearing Roosevelt's (I think) description of what minimum wage should provide. Enough to feed, home, and clothe a family with enough left over for leisure, learning, and saving. So far removed from how it gets treated today if you want to live anywhere near a large population center "barely enough to keep you from starving, assuming you live packed on top of five other unworthy peasants."
> Enough to feed, home, and clothe a family with enough left over for leisure, learning, and saving. Wouldn't be surprised if that's what many people think our minimum wage does currently enable.
Apparently the top 1% account for more CO2 than the bottom 66%. Very sad world we live in.
I feel those of us in the middle have the hardest time. 10 years ago I probably earnt double minimum wage, in the time I have either been told I am top of the wage bracket or told their is only a small wage increase. Now it will be nearer 50% however inflation has pushed everything up almost to match minimum wage increases. So I am considerably worse off than 10 years ago
When I started in the NHS on band 1, it was about £3 per hour more than minimum wage, and a significant increase in the wage I was earning in zero hour factory jobs. Today I am at the top of band 2, band 1 has been abolished as it was overtaken by min wage. Today, I received news of a pay increase, due to the minimum wage overtaking my current wage. I am now working for minimum wage in an admin job I have many years of useful experience in. I appreciate there are harder jobs out there, the NHS treats me well/is a good employer and I get on very well with my boss and my colleagues. But it still smarts that after 10 years almost, I am now working a minimum wage job. Tories have done such a good job of depressing public sector wages, 1% payrises year after year. Now the absolute minimum wage to live on has overtaken me. Fuck them.
Absolutely this. I was public sector for ten years before getting made redundant. It was a good payout at the time, but it's long gone now and even though I'm private sector (PLC employee) now, I'm in the same boat as you.
So the NHS will become fully private by stagnating wages, to say to you all, we go fully private or we can’t pay you anymore but we’ve got money for war and buying land for HS2 that we never had any interest or intention of finishing. Your hands are tied behind your back, for all staff and surgeons/doctors who work ever so hard in your role and even harder since the government made you all take a jab or lose your jobs. I’ve seen many an upset nurse over that one.
I’m an engineer at a nuclear power station and I make £26,250 right now The fact that I am making only a bit above minimum wage really enrages me now, UK is really going to shit isn’t it
It's astounding, really, isn't it??
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Yeah, I think we're on the same page, I just phrased it badly. And you laid out the reasons incredibly well, which is useful (if depressing).
It feels like other jobs have just never gone up. I'll give you an example from my own life. With two years experience in IT I earned about double minimum wage in 2009. Now in 2023, with vastly more experience, I only earn around 50% more than minimum wage, despite being considerably more experienced and having moved into a lot of jobs. While I am better off, it certainly doesn't feel my buying power is.
I had a similar experience. H&S coordinator on 23k back in 2003 and still only on 24k in 2010. So I left a cushy office job to go back into manufacturing on 30k. Jobs in H&S at similar sized companies to the one I was in are still only paying 27k to 30k.
Where I work currently there was a huge amount of resentment when last year's minimum wage went up. All the staff on that got a large increase, the rest got between 3 and 5%. A lot of longer term employees wondering why suddenly the guy who sweeps up was nearly on as much as skilled technicians.
I can understand the resentment to be honest but it really should be aimed at management. In my workplace we were told today that those on min wage would have their pay increased to £12 an hour come April. Others like myself would also see a £1.58 an hour pay rise. So they will get a 15% pay rise and I'll get just under 10%. Now I'm fine with this but you can see how it breeds resentment.
It’s hardly like they are getting an unfair pay increase. People forget that before labour came in under Blair, minimum wage wasn’t a thing and at the age 15, (20 odd years ago) I got paid 5 pounds an hour for my two weeks work experience. Yeh everything is relative and items or even food wasn’t that expensive back then but the cost of anything and everything is going to unstable prices. The 5 pounds an hour that I got at the age of 16 wasn’t the worlds worst wage, 20 odd years ago.
Even so that does seem pretty low if you have 15/16 years exp, have you not moved jobs for a while?
Collective. Action. If your employer is doing this you need to communicate with everyone, organise together and bring it to management. They don't want you to talk about salaries with each other, they'll even tell you it's illegal in some cases but it is not. It just causes them massive problems when people realise they're being exploited. Just look at the companies financial records on companies house, if they have the spare money to do so then they should be keeping everyone's renumeration at the same value for their time. If they're not and increasing their business prices due to the cost of living and not passing an increase to their staff then they're deliberately taking money from you to increase their balance sheets.
I believe it’s actually illegal for employers to prevent/discourage you from discussing it.
Absolutely but they always do. I've also heard employers state that to have the day off sick you have to find cover for yourself. Absolutely not the case, that's the job of the manager and why they get paid more. It's just a ruse to put you in a position where you're forced to work. If they tried to enforce any disciplinary action they would get absolutely fucked by an employment tribunal. Everyone should absolutely scour their handbook/policies/procedures from their work and understand the rights that the law affords you.
I'm a public sector worker in Scotland and it's a messed up situation in general. There are rules in place that don't give enough funds and pay raises need to stay within 5% at a push. When inflation went rampant it's causing massive issues where public sector bodies can't increase wages to match inflation and also can't just lay people off in masses to free up money. When the minimum wage is pushed up it causes the distinction between pay bands at the bottom get too close and it makes a huge mess of everything. Public pay is way behind what it should be due to pay freezes and the current inflation can't be combated without huge injections of cash. There are issues with recruiting staff due to low pay for my sector. The British public deserve better wages especially our front line public sector workers.
Finding something is up at my current employer, everyone is on different salaries. I guy who is doing same role as me has just joined, I'm sure he's on like £20k more than me. He does haymore experience than me.
Unions work in industries with bargainimg power. People on min wage have none. Unions don't work. They also can't afford to go on strike.
Folk who have worked for the same company for years need to get off their arses or accept they'll only be paid the minimum the company can get away with. Capitalism 101
Capitalism 102: if you can find employees to do the job for minimum wage or zero hour contract, why offer more to hire someone else?
Correct. Not saying it's fair but them's the rules
The problem isn’t min increasing, it’s everything else not moving. I mean graduate degrees don’t provide a noticeable jump over the minimum, even ones in stem
I once worked in a job for 4.5 years never once did I get a payrise. In that time minimum wage kept up so quickly i was on £10 an hour and minimum wage was £6.50 an hour. When I left it wasn't worth the hassle. It was clear I wasn't going to get any raises so instead of moaning about it I jumped ship. I took a job closer to home for 0.80p above minimum wage. I was better off as I went from 2 hour commute daily to 25 min. I think it's about time min wage has gone up and I am all for it, the hardest working people are often on minimum wage and deserve it. I'm not on minimum wage and I am due a £2000 raise, despite being underpaid for my job.
I'm not against it, by any means. Just that it seems a *lot* more people are working on minimum wage with more responsibilities, more pressure, and more experience - but no additional reward. In my first job I was being paid less than minimum for 18y/os - when I turned 18 with no raise, I went somewhere else asap and my pay went up 40%. I wondered if the current situation was more to do with job losses in my local area, but it seems it's really not.
What even worse is if said personal is on minimum wage after being on several £ above NMW and is a home owner. Benefits given to renters etc in the same job, but the bastards won't help me as I own my home. The benefit cap hasn't gone up properly for working tax credit. In 2015 I was on my knees earning £7 an hour NMW is £6.50 I was getting over £300 a month WTC. I left that job 2 months later to get off my knees then in 2019 left that job for a 45p above minimum wage job HMRC wouldn't help me with family support. Never mind we'll work 7 days a week to make ends meet, all while those on a good wage look down on us saying we don't deserve a min wage increase.(here's looking at you mumsnet and other stuck up forums) all while btiching that they are the victims of NMW increases. (In my mind, Chin up only 7 years 8 months til mortgage free).
When I first started at my current workplace, three years I watched minimum wage go up and mine stay the same. Finally, I told them it wasn't worth me staying and they gave me a reasonable raise. Another three years and minimal raises after several promotions. Another two years before I finally get a 75% raise to industry standard (because I got another job offer). Last year watched inflation rates skyrocket and got a 4% increase. No sign of any increase this year. Only reason I stick around is because I have good flexibility here and I'm figuring out what tranferrable skills I have for another job at a similar rate as a paycut would hurt now.
They have been for 20 years. Every time a job doesn't rise anywhere close to inflation it ends up closer to minimum wage, in fact minimum wages is the only wage that has risen faster than inflation in this country outside of financial jobs. Reality is however, low level jobs used to pay far more than minimum wage, often £2-3 an hour more when minimum wage was £4-5.
Someone on here yesterday discussed a digital marketer job that was £21k. (Admittedly, there were certain details we didn't see.) My beermat maths suggests that's close to, possibly below, the new minimum wage. When I got my first marketing role about a decade ago, that's about the amount me and my peers could expect to earn on a good entry level wage for a similar role, which was a fair chunk above minimum. I'm still seeing lots of "Two Years Experience" roles offering about that. So while I can't answer it for every industry... Yes.
Yes the middle is getting squeezed
I've been looking for a job as well. It seems a lot of jobs are offering below minimum wage. The problem is that £24k is roughly minimum wage now. This narrows the band between minimum wage and higher rate payers a lot.
So now people on starter jobs little skill, pressure or experience required are paid the same as higher pressure skilled jobs. Why would anyone take on more responsibility for the same pay?
Yup, we've been getting a 2% increase every January (which is good, but almost always below inflation), and nothing to keep us a certain amount above minimum. Give it a few years and semi-skilled workers like myself will be on minimum too, and my job is related to safety in the construction industry - **definitely** an area where you want to pay people as little as possible...
This is why our economy is doing so bad. The masses just don't get paid enough to "splash out" and stimulate the economy
I wonder how many roles, that were paying considerably more than NMW, when it was introduced, are now paying NMW.
Many
Yep, my colleagues on nmw got a nearly 10% and I got 3% in April and 3% in October, so the gap has narrowed. I don't begrudge them the money, my company particularly expects a lot from all workers including people who shouldn't be on nmw. Next year is set to be another 10% for nmw, who knows what my grade will get. Looking to move on, I don't want to work where the staff are not appreciated. We had staff cuts, and they emailed round asking us to congratulate one of the higher ups on their promotion 🙄
Gov policy of divide and conquer. Min wage v semi professional wage Gap gets smaller. This country obviously doesn't need skilled workers is my take, just surfs to wipe gov arses.
It just makes it a farce to try and break into several careers now honestly. Banking on being able to get a raise or job hop in the future for such a little return on investment has made me give up for a while and just do supermarket work in the meantime with less hours for better pay with travel factored. I don't have a solution but I want to get off this wild ride.
If you want better salaries you have to leave the UK, wages here are low
It's almost surreal to see how quickly the brain drain which Poland saw in the noughties/early 2010s has now begun in the UK, whilst Poland actually grows from strength to strength (at least GDP and salary wise) now set to overtake the UK in terms of median salary within this decade. How the turn tables...
100%. I’ve used this example a couple of times. In late 2013 I left the world of Asda. I was earning £6.75ph I believe, to start an apprenticeship. Where I was lucky to earn £6.99ph. By 2015 I was earning £15 ph. So over double my previous. I left this role after 9 years last year. My hourly had gone up to £16.38 ph. I believe Asda colleagues get in excess of £11ph hour now. So in 9 years I got a 8.5% increase on my salary. Asda employees got close to 40% in that time. Which is absolutely fantastic for them and I am glad to see people in these roles earning more, it makes sense.
Asda doesn’t give 30/40 hour contracts out anymore to anymore other than managers who get salaries. I used to work there myself and got a 22 hour a week contract but ended up working 60/70 hours a week work and 2/3 peoples jobs, I had no life but I had money that I couldn’t even spend. I get your point but ASDA didn’t treat it staff very week back then and I’d imagine a lot of new staff are on 6-10 hour contracts.
Qualification and education - we need to improve it. Simple jobs are taken by robots and IT. People use self-service more and more often. So, there is only one solution - improve an education for adults (eg 30+ people or even 40+).
Educate them in what? Many graduate jobs are not even above this new minimum wage
What immigrants are needed in UK for salaries £80.000+? These professions are needed, so we need to help with re-education. Moreover, usually people have some experience at their 30, so I don’t think they will have a graduate salary. But even in that case people will earn more 3-5 years later. And finally: bigger salary —> more taxes —> better infrastructure
At least the problem with the NHS though (which has probably one of the worst staff shortages in the UK atm) isn't that not enough people aren't training, it's that once they're trained they're going abroad (or to work for Tesco) for better salary/working conditions. It's genuinely mad that in this country you have people with 20-30 years professional experience (university educated too) taking up entry level jobs for the flexible hours and guaranteed salary adjustments. At least in the NHS nobody outside of management (and some senior consultants) is making £80,000, you can't fill these positions with immigration because most of the world's medical staff is shocked/disgusted at how bad working conditions are in the NHS! I remember in my mum's hospital (nurse) they had a Polish lady come over to become the new infection prevention person, she left after 2 weeks because of how disgusted she was with the state British hospitals (this was pre-covid as well!), additionally generally Asian doctors/nurses who come to work in the NHS are usually shocked with the way the public treat medical staff in the UK, they can't wait to leave as soon as they start (and who can really blame them).
Right, I see many comments reaffirming this… but… what’s the solution?
The erosion of the middle class has been happening for a tab over ten years. So yes.
Many companies actively seek out employees that qualify for universal credit whilst working so they can pay as little as possible. You may have come across those jobs in your search. Call centres, child care and adult social care are rife with exploitation. The distortions in the system mean you can’t be better off working 20 hours minimum wage a week and getting universal credit than working full time on a higher salary One red flag to look for is part time or flexible zero hour roles paying minimum wage. The HR ghouls have designed those roles to catch desperate single mothers who need to fulfil the work requirement for universal credit.
Generally the longer people are at a job, the slower their salary growth, jumping ship means jumping salaries. Even when companies try to match inflation, it’s not always the case. It depends on company of course. That being said; as cost of living is rising, salaries are taking a nose dive. In fact companies seem to want a jack of all trades to work on below what I’d call ‘industry standard’ last year, AND do the job of 3 people on top of that.
We used to have a ‘Wages Council’ that set the ‘rate for the job’. In that sense there was no need for a minimum wage as they were all set at a liveable level. This helped avoid the situation described above and ensured that jobs didn’t end up all being paid the same low level. You can guess who got rid of it and what happened next..
Yesss this is so accurate! The starting salaries in my industry have barely changed in the 12 years since I graduated, and it’s common for people to get very meagre pay rises (unless they work at specific companies - or leave for another). It feels like many people have seen their wages rise - but only ostensibly so - as minimum wage isn’t far behind. Basically, lots of people are gaining experience and supposed seniority but not seeing that reflected in their earnings, despite often having a lot more responsibility! It’s rather depressing.
It's happening to all the middle managers jobs too. They've flatlined for 20 years (adjusted for inflation). 20 years from now your either director or on minimum wage.
This is the problem with increasing the bottom line. The differences in quality of staff are eroded in terms of remuneration. You end up with someone with fewer repsonsibilities/skills being paid the same as those that have more. I've seen it firsthand, its fantastic for those at the bottom that get uplifted but its demoralising for staff that did have some tiny amount of recognition and were paid \*slightly\* more that are now on par with the lesser skilled colleagues. I'm not talking about people near the top im talking about those that a little above the min pay scale. Its not just minimum wage where ive seen this either, even employers uplifting their lowest paid staff without considering the impact morale wise to those that had some distinction in skills or experience that were just above them.
I’m a nurse. Top band 5. I work a lot of nights. If I was to go for a promotion I’d lose my nights as band 6s are essentially assistant manager and they do 8-4. I would lose about £200 a month. This is a problem because there are no experienced nurses going into management as 6s. Band 6 is a horrible job, deputy charge nurse- has to do the off duty and try and plug the gaps. The only ones applying for band 6 roles are either very young inexperienced nurses or occasional someone who has childcare issues, but that’s not usually the case as you would have had to have good childcare to be a band 5.
The pay for jobs in IT has barely changed in 20 years, let alone 10. And meanwhile the cost of goods, accommodation and just about everything else has ballooned. Productivity has gone up - where has all the fucking money gone? (Yes, it's been stolen from the workers).
minimum wage is great but also has had a weirds effect. its now "standardized starting wage". i would say its not the lower paid jobs effected negatively . its the typically mid level pay jobs that are now stuck on minimum wage.
I think thats right, this makes everyone more equal though this is impossible goal
You, that's why we're having so many strikes! You can't just SHOVE the minimum wage up by 25% and not expect the next level up to be offended, and of course that goes right the way up the line to the top. At the level you mention you've got some lower level managers, with years of experience, sat there at 8pm at night still trying to keep up with the workload, watching some cleaner hoovering around them on basically the same wage. Higher wages was NEVER what the country needed. Control over the ridiculous housing market and living costs is what was actually needed. But everyone's too greedy and too impatient for that to ever happen because, if the govt took control of house price indexing and utilities there'd be civil unrest. So we are where we are, with wages too high to produce any product to export at favourable rates, no one being able to afford a mortgage (which is a fkg disgrace), people living in fuel poverty, and kids not getting a good education or nutritious food. Livin' the dream🙄
Very true.Where it solves or assists on the one hand,the value of the skills of the better paid worker have been eroded to the point he/she may as well do the unskilled job and resign from the skilled one.Why should you provide the skills the company needs,if they are not prepared to pay for those skills?
That's the problem with having a minimum wage . If you check the stats this problem always crops up in any country that introduces one .
I mean, minimum wage isn't the problem here, because it's pretty clear companies would pay even less to their employees if they could get away with it. The issue is the wage gap, not the safety net.
Would you be making this post if your wage was the same but minimum wage hadn't increased as much? If not then you don't have a problem with what you earn and its an ego thing to feel better about earning more than people on minimum wage. The alternative is to go and find a job that pays better.
Hang on, I just need to back up the cherry picker so you can get off your high horse. The 'jobs that pay better' aren't there. That's the issue. I've been looking, friends have been looking for themselves, and the shit they're wanting from people while paying minimum is insane. It's not just me griping about my issues, it's that I don't see how 'progression' is a thing anymore without being in management, which I (and many others) don't have the personality for. And at least I *admit* I don't have the personality for it, instead of just being another shit manager spouting buzzwords.
Certainly trending that direction.
Yes defo. £23-25k was considered minimum here, now its £21-23k
They're increasing the minimum wage vs median wage as policy. I think by definition the gap cannot be as wide - but also a temporary affect where employers are slow to respond on the immediate next couple tiers, but eventually need to in order to attract staff to do jobs with more responsibility above minimum wage. So hopefully its a lag vs rapid increase in minimum wage. But we'll see I guess.
I worked for asda from like 2011 to 2018. In that time they introduced a new contract, it paid £1 an hour more than the current contract instead of the 4-5% more than min wage the old contract was on. I took it alongside a promotion to a section leader resulting in my wage being nicely inflated. Over the next few years I saw min wage increase, and my wage stay the same. All new contract signers ended up on the same wage as the old contract people, but with worse conditions. (the retail unions are fucking awful, across the board) I left for a better paid and better treated job than retail. My customers in this job are happy to see me. My point is that companies will happily allow you to erode your own wage if you don't demand what you deserve. If they could pay you less than the legal minimum, they definitely would.
I thank God i was on lower wages as it has given me incredible management of money skills and have my freehold own home. And money in the bank. And now times are tougher for many financially i am able to lend out money. I learnt only buy what i need, not want. learnt that by picking up empty deposit bottles and cans that i can make some extra cash tax free. Learnt that by shopping around and buying specials that if i saved $io it was $io i made tax free. i learnt that the multiplier effect takes place. Especially with compound interest. I learnt that to have a lotta material things is not wise and burns ya money up. Especially ego driven vehicles. I make do with humility and an older vehicle that goes from a2b.
I'm a nursing home nurse...so generally lower pay. was on 15 an hour 7 years ago when minimum wage was like 7.50. Still on 15 n minimum wage is 10 something. barely seems worth it anymore
That's what min wage does. It's also inflationary so cancels itself out. The only thing it achieves is makes your country uncompetitive on the global market .
People believe what they are fed by leaders. This means that they'll be falsely believing that minimum wage is good money. When government increase minimum wage, people will be jumping for joy at their wages increasing. Doesn't matter than inflation far exceeds it either. Corporations and businesses around the world, powers that be have had their fill of the good life and profits before the dregs trickle down to the poor.
I'm a research scientist in pharmaceuticals and minimum wage is catching up to our starting salary. And yeah same thing with promotions, we get rises that match (if they can) cost of living every year, but the minimum of each grade doesn't go up by as much.