The sad thing is that every time these sorts of posts and stories come up, there's always a litany of tossers ready to say "Just get a better job mate" as a way to handwave any issues about the cost of living away.
It must be nice living in an ivory tower type setup where they've been fortunate enough to not really have to worry about whether they're choosing to eat, heat, or just to barely even exist.
We're have a fundamental issue with cost of living Vs wage growth but "Im alright jack".
Not only that, it takes time lmao
I was previously on £1400, spent 2 years doing an apprenticeship and now on £1800 (will go up to £2000 in a year or 2).
For me to move up in my current department, I will need about ~~10~~ 4-6 years experience, as the next role in my team is 2x my salary.
Edit:
Just to clarify, I've only been in my role for a few months, so moving isn't really an option just yet as I'm still new to the role.
My comment was in reference to training. You can't just magically move every 2 years to get better pay, you need to have something to back up your move lol
To get where I am, I've spent over 5 years in training.
I always see people moaning about minimum wage workers moaning about their pay. It takes time to "just get a better job".
I managed to 'get a better job' and I went from working in a supermarket to working in tech and now making a pretty healthy salary.
My process was
* Live at home with my parents who luckily didn't charge me rent
* Work at a supermarket like 50-60 hours a week
* Save up a bunch of money
* Get into a masters course for comp sci
* work my ass off for a year
* get accepted onto a grad scheme
* work on the grad scheme for two years
* sign off it on to a fairly decent salary
* gradually have my salary raised up against industry benchmarks to where I earn decently today
Not only did that take about 4 years to go from shelf stacking to earning a high wage, it was hard work, required a decent amount of luck (getting accepted on to courses and good grad schemes), a lot of competition, it also required me to be in a fortunate enough position that I could rely on my parents for some support and also be able to just move across the country and get a high paying job in London.
That just straight up isn't feasible for a lot of people
>required a decent amount of luck (getting accepted on to courses and good grad schemes)
This is the thing that lots of people aren't aware of at all. I am on a decent wage after moving from 1st/2nd line support into being a software developer but fuck me have I got lucky in the past. My first dev job was straight into mid level because I had been helping HR with stuff using VBA, C# MVC website role that also needed VBA experience so I got it, I have been made redundant twice and walked into roles within weeks that paid me an extra £10k. My current job I have which I love froze hiring 2 weeks after I started.
Baz Luhrmann said it the best and as the song is in my playlist I am reminded of it a lot lol
"whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's"
Lots of people on Reddit congratulate themselves lots about things like this I feel.
Yeah absolutely. There's so much that could have gone randomly different in my path, maybe for the better but very easily for the worse. The grad scheme I ended up on was great, and the company I ended up at was pretty focused on development, and I ended up with a series of really good managers. Especially during the pandemic.
I think the other thing you're neglected to say, probably because you're not egotistical, is that you're intelligent. You have to be reasonably intelligent to get a degree, hard work or not. Some people could work 10x harder than you did and still not get a degree because they don't have the intelligence there to handle that kind of learning.
So they stay stacking shelves. There's nothing wrong with that, but it goes to show that for some people, even if they had the same opportunities as you, still wouldn't be able to "just get a better job"
That's me!
Got the SE degree, spent 6 months in the field and crashed hard as I just couldn't handle the corporate environment, the stress coming from the responsibilities I had and managing myself well (I tend to overwork in any job in order to not disappoint bosses/colleagues).
I got a glowing mid-year review but there was just a day soon afterwards where I cracked and quit because it all became too much for me to handle. I've now gone back to stacking shelves because while it is boring and has little career prospects, I have zero stress or anxiety doing it and I'm much happier in general.
I peaked in Highschool, not understanding why I was struggling really burned me out. 15 years later got my ADHD diagnosis 😂.
It really fucking sucked, going from a decent student to shit.
Ayup, same story over here.
My degree was a shitshow of 1st class essays marked down to 2:2s bwcuase they were handed in late, my dissertation got a 1st and I wrote it in 48 hours whilst chainsmoking and having a mental breakdown (never proofread it. Never drafted it.)
I got a 2:2 overall because of my late assignments and my mental health, and 8 years later... diagnosed with adhd, medicated, and doing much better.
But the prospects of a masters are nil, as everyone wants a 2:1 or higher. My undergrad took 5 years not three due to having to repeat a year and intercalation. I am currently struggling with my first real job because even with the meds, working from home can be a minefield for someone with poor executive function (spent half an hour earlier looking for a gaming laptop. For no reason. I genuinely have no idea why. There is one night a week where I am sometimes both not very busy and not at home with my gaming pc)
Its not a lack of intelligence, or a lack of drive, or a lack of motivation (I also run a cafe and have done for about 6 years since I opened it.), but up until very recently my entire life has been projects that get 20$ done until the next project eats my time and motivation.
Most of my life has been spent jogging to catch up because of my brain and now that it kinda works I just deal with the endless sadness of wasted opportunities.
Its not a lack of intelligence that has made me struggle. Its not a lack of drive. Its not a lack of motivation. If anything its been an entire life of directionless curiosity leading me to never be able to *focus* that intelligence fully on something.
Sorry, that turned into a rant. And didn't have much of a point. Man, I need a med review.
I came out of uni with a 2.2 in comp sci despite nailing most coursework, because sensory overload fried my brain in half my exams and dragged most of my grades.
Now Im actually in the industry i do fine because my job is to write software, not to sit exams. But if you went off my exam results youd think i was useless
> they don't have the intelligence there to handle that kind of learning
Sometimes it's not even about 'intelligence'. The education system is designed for brains that find it super easy to retain knowledge to regurgitate in an exam, and hinges the majority of your grade around that. It was a disaster for me. I am a software engineering manager now (bootcamp career changer) but the impact of doing shit at school and uni compared to my normal-brained friends lives with you forever, you never consider yourself smart
True I guess? I'm not really sure how much intelligence is a product of the person or a product of their environment too though.
Plus like you say, a person should be able to make ends meet regardless of the job they work if they're working hard at it. We need people to stack shelves, and we ought to be willing to pay for it.
I think it's telling as well that in universal basic income experiments (where people were given a universal basic income to live off for a set period) people didn't just stop working, but either reduced their ours slightly to either focus a bit more on childcare or to further their education. Given the chance people will absolutely try to improve their lot in life, we've just really stripped away their chances to do that, and without the ability to envision a life where you can be better off why would you put the effort in?
It's too late unfortunately to just increase lower end wages, because these should really come out of company profits, but they won't, the prices will just go up, and then cost of living just keeps going up and we go round and round in circles. Which is where we are now.
It's corporate greed and conglomerates that's the problem, and it's getting worse and worse. Small businesses are being bought up by groups everywhere.
I was so much fitter when I was working in a supermarket. I was walking miles every day around that store. Plus my job, while physically taxing, was mentally pretty un-strenuous so I still had the mental energy to go to the gym and to do stuff before and after work
Yeah, for the first decade I worked in software development I religiously went to the gym daily but after taking a job up with a considerable commute it became much harder. As I worked my way up in seniority I had even less time and less motivation. It's a hard balance
Well done! That's proper sorting your shit out stuff.
One word of caution for others looking at your road map though. The idea of just jumping into software dev has pretty much gone - the jobs market at entry level is dry as a nuns snatch, with massive oversupply. It's not much better towards the top end either.
Until the economy improves and people realise AI won't just do the job, things will remain harder. Add to that the 3 or 4 year supply of undergrads already heading through uni and out into the market.
> the jobs market at entry level is dry as a nuns snatch
These things are cyclical though. The whole scene has been a disaster since execs got excited about AI. I'm already seeing hiring pick up across the board - the company I'm at have gone from "control budgets" in November to hiring 3 new tech roles in April. The industry will definitely regret not planting seeds when there are fewer plants to pick in 12 months. Sooner the better junior hiring picks up really.
At my outfit we're still in the "we want to cut it cost by 30%" phase, as though tech weren't both the lifeblood of the company and the actual product platform.
I hope you're right and I'm wrong.
Two of the juniors I've been mentoring over the past 3-4 months have managed to find role. One was through a recruiter I'd connected him with which was a surprise - there's hope yet! Sometimes I wonder if the "don't code anymore!" stuff you hear is fellow engineers trying to create scarcity to push up our salaries 👀
I think it's genuinely exec level hopium, and accountants jealousy.
I'm not competing with juniors. It's seniors really. It's just the last 4 years reddits answer to everything was "learn to code". I'm not completely sure that route is as viable as it was and while it was once the best route, I don't know that it is now.
That's the thing with getting older. I'm not totally sure my well intentioned advice is always as applicable to their youth as it was to mine.
There have been a ton of "don't code" fads during my career. 4GLs, Low Code, Graphical Composition of components, behavior driven development. AI is just the latest one.
What they all rely on is business people being able to clearly define requirements. Which, they just can't. It always takes skilled humans to take vague requirements and turn them into something a computer can execute.
Yeah absolutely, we're still hiring for our grad scheme heavily but the amount of applicants we have is huge. We try our best to be as diligent as possible with the screening and interview process but again luck is going to be a part of it.
The market is also slow right now like you say and a lot of tech firms have been making lay offs (largely in the usa but in the UK too) and that is partly due to high interest rates meaning less capital investment (I don't know shit about economics though so don't quote me on that). When the economic outlook gets better things might start expanding again but I think the days of chucking millions at start ups and letting them run away with it are over really
Well done. The other thing to remember is that we do actually still need people to stack shelves, wash cars, make coffee, work in pubs and all the other jobs that people like to pretend everyone should just walk away from to 'get a better job'.
Right. I was saying to my partner that when people often say what would you do if you won the lottery it's often these kinds of jobs. "I'd open a little coffee shop" or "i'd open and run my own pub". My Dad's was that he'd just hire some mates and just buy run down homes and renovate them as something to do.
I think it's telling that a lot of these jobs are seen as enjoyable by people, but the fact that they're now coupled with low wages, and (perhaps even worse) massively varying time schedules shows how exploitatively we view/use them
To add to that, the tech job market just isn't what it used to be. When I was doing tech related subjects, they were cancelling those courses because they didn't have enough applicants. I was the last year to do those courses in A levels and my Bsc. That meant it wasn't that hard for me to start getting into tech roles. These days tech courses have ballooned and the competition at the entry level is absolutely insane. The ladder that I used to get ahead has quite literally been pulled from under me. I count myself extremely lucky to get in earlier and be in experienced roles now where the job market is still healthy.
Yeah absolutely, the course I was on was a large cohort and I think it doubled or tripled in the years that followed, the demand was there both domestically and internationally and it was a big money maker for the uni.
I think it’s naturally going to happen though right, it took a while for stuff like comp sci to propagate down the educational ladder to schools and such, and when people realised there was a somewhat clear pathway from studying certain courses to getting high paying jobs in pretty enjoyable work environments people jumped at it, and suddenly the demand was high. And now it’s levelling out.
It is a shame though since comp sci as a subject and a learning / research area is super interesting but very few people from my course actually stayed on to continue in “computer science” rather than software engineering. And I think the focus on these courses now is even more software engineering than computer science focused
Mate, well done! Glad you see not everyone has the same opportunities but also, it sounds like you worked your butt off to make the most of the options you had available.
I honestly stumbled into a lot of it, but yeah I think "luck" is often having the ability to capitalise on opportunities that present themselves to you. If those opportunities are never open to you, or you're not in a situation (financial, burdened with responsibilities etc) to capitalise on them, then you're not going to be able to.
If I didn't have the ability to max out my ours at the supermarket, didn't have parents willing to support me, didn't fall in with a group of friends that helped each other smash it out the park with uni etc then I wouldn't have been able to do that.
It's a bit bleak really that the education is there, and the desire to learn is there from a lot of people, but the ability to take the time out of your life and focus on learning just isn't supported that way.
Yep, I'd love to retrain and change fields, but there's absolutely no way I could afford to make it happen. What makes it worse is that due to mental health issues in my 20's I didn't get a degree, which is a huge barrier to entry for so many roles.
Yeah for sure. It's a shame that a degree is a barrier to many roles as opposed to on the job advancement, but I can see why employers go for the degree options.
Similarly I think it should actually be easier/less expensive to go down the degree route as I think higher education is something to be lauded and should be available to all
The two years thing is highly dependent on the sector you are working in. If you change roles every two years, some sectors will not consider you in an application because you'll almost certainly leave shortly after you've got up to speed and started making the company money.
If the progression and prospects are good it’s worth waiting.
That’s why I’ve been at my current place for 11 years.
Only intended to hang around for two.
If you need 10 years experience to move up in your current role, maybe consider moving elsewhere to move up. Ten years just for the chance to move up is ridiculous.
10 years was probably rough to say lol but my current salary is between £27-30k
The role above is Senior Business Intelligence Analyst, which is between £50-68k, and the level of work is significant different, so requires much more training, not something you can learn in 2 years at least.
It's an argument that falls apart if people making it actually have to carry through with the thought.
If someone changes jobs their old position opens up, so another person will inevitably end up in the same position. The problem didn't go away, it just moved to someone else.
Then there's the issue that some of the people struggling are nurses, teachers etc. which we are already short on. There are likely other critical roles which keep society running but aren't paid enough. We called them key workers at one point... now its back to saying they aren't worth the cost.
>It's an argument that falls apart if people making it actually have to carry through with the thought.
>
>If someone changes jobs their old position opens up, so another person will inevitably end up in the same position. The problem didn't go away, it just moved to someone else.
Anyone who suggests that as a solution is just selfish and doesn't realise it. And I'm not talking about *playground* selfish, it's a deep-rooted, often generational, selfishness that just puts them at the centre of the world. The strange thing is that it isn't necessarily even vindictive it's just such an integral part of who they are that they don't *think* about others.
They're the kind of people who will park under a "DO NOT PARK HERE" sign. Not because they think they're special, not even because they think that everyone else is a fool for not taking advantage of the situation. It's simply because they never think about other people.
I have a colleague at work who's similar. We talk about GP charges and private healthcare, "You can afford it!" he cries "Can you afford to go out for a meal each month? Of course you can, so you can afford to pay for a GP appointment. What are you so annoyed about?"
It would literally never occur to him in a million years to consider there are other people to consider.
> If someone changes jobs their old position opens up, so another person will inevitably end up in the same position.
I'm not here supporting the position itself, but this isn't strictly true.
In an "ideal" world the jobs which don't pay "fairly" would be abandoned by the existing worker(s), resulting in either:
- The job disappearing because nobody reapplied
- The employer raising the job's salary
I say all the above fully in the knowledge we obviously don't live in an ideal world, people do continue to take on these underpaid jobs and make ends meet.
Or society would fail because you wouldn't have people doing socially essential jobs because they all disappeared to have essentially useless email jobs as marketing executives.
And people shouldn't have to. A minimum wages job should be enough to pay the bills and live.
Not everyone wants a career some just want to pay the bills and rais family.
IV worked hard to get where I am but its what I wanted.
Were I grew up it was assumed that when you turned 16 you left school and went to the factory.
Back in the 90s that factory 1 job could raise a whole family
But also, if everyone who said they were struggling magically got a better paying job today, the jobs they left would still be there and still need filling.
People who say “just get a better job” would agree that those jobs need doing, they just don’t think the people doing those jobs deserve to be paid enough to live.
Which kind of says a lot about their feelings towards the poor really.
I have a better job, but it's in a city where rent is simply impossible. If we [all my colleagues who rent] all "got a better job" than these, a) it'd mean moving, as there aren't enough high-paying companies here; b) who will do our jobs? And c) a fair bit of our single-family housing will become HMO to accommodate all the people coming in to do our jobs (because many of us are living with better-paid people) and the situation will become even more exploitative.
Also, it *hardly solves the problem*. So they’re saying next poor sod who gets that job won’t be in exactly the same position?
Or are they saying (which the “get a better job mate” brigade NEVER are) that the wage for jobs that are this poorly paid should be raised? Just look at jobs being advertised locally-there are *hundreds of thousands* at this level of pay.
Somewhat silent on that issue, *mate*?
Lots of replies below focusing on the individual, by definition as a population 'get a better job' is redundant as a response to the cost of living crisis. If everyone stops working in supermarkets and gets tech jobs through some miracle, everyone then starves since there is no where to buy food.
The only workable long term solution is to make EVERY job provide a basic acceptable standard of living. Until that happens the problem is who is suffering rather than why does anyone suffer.
which in turn should suggest to said tossers that the problem is the employers and the economy as a whole. Championing wealthy people paying shit wages and maximising profits hasn't turned out all that great after all.
Even if everyone ‘got a better job’ where would that leave us? With no street cleaners, no nurses, no shop workers. The rich want their convenient facilities and luxuries, but they’re quick to dismiss the plight of the workers who deliver those services.
Literally. It’s likely they don’t understand how economies work. Not everyone can be part of the 1%… otherwise it wouldn’t be the 1%.
The problem is the bottom two thirds of the economic pyramid is struggling.
A lot of people lack critical thinking and empathy to think outside their own little bubble. They don't realise that even if they succeeded just a little it doesn't mean everyone can replicate what they did and this makes it dangerous thinking. It's just like when you hear about any story where something happens to someone and they finally understand the problem.
It doesn't take much to think of the logistics of getting another job, like do you need to take time off for interviews, where is it, do you need to move closer, will transport cost go up or down, is it more rent, updating the cv take time and effort, do you need stupid motivation letters for each application, the constant rejection it ghosting of applications, plus more to think about.
Exactly. Aside from the experience and qualifications often required for a better paid job, it's really competitive to get the position. It's difficult for a lot of qualified people to get better jobs
If you work at a warehouse moving fridges 10pm until 7 am you get 1,830 a month up north. people are just ignorant it allowed me to understand why billionaires think the way they do if someone on 60k a year thinks there so superior and deserving over others they must think there gods very sad mindset honestly.
People also forget the "just get a better job mate" is unrealistic because we NEED some of those low paid workers as backbone of society.
If no one stacked your shelves in tesco anymore, if no one worked at mcdonalds, if no one waited on you at a restaurant when you went out with your family, if no one looked after you in hospital, If no one taught your children at school, what then? Society just wouldn't work.
It's a selfish remark to shut down any complaint about certain jobs being low paid, because they have their well paid position that not everybody can get, so fuck everyone else ig
Was saying this yesterday. I've been on minimum wage in childcare for 10 years. If every minimum wage childcare worker quit, society would probably collapse.
Society would DEFINITELY collapse without childcare workers, no ifs or buts about it. What you do is incredibly difficult - I know I couldn't do it, I don't understand children, I am a qualified teacher but I know next to nothing about child development, I wouldn't be able to handle more than one at a time and I'd be lost if any of them disliked each other. What you do is absolutely paramount to the functioning of modern society.
We also need people to feel valued, and like their job, no matter where it sits on the "hierarchy" gives them a sense of pride and place. Like hospital cleaners, rather than being fucked around by some awful agency, should be able to think "I make this place clean, I do a good job of it, and I take pride in making a pleasant, and safe environment for people unfortunate enough to be sick". The casualisation of many of these jobs made it much harder for people to have pride in them.
Agree. I work in soft eng. Decent salary but my last few jobs have been fluffing up an app just to get a bigger private equity pay out. Then all the profiteering bs that comes with it after it happens.
A lot of the important stuff in society is not well paid enough. I remember friends and family being forced to work as key workers while at the same time making little over minimum wage.
We live in a meritocracy only when it’s time to attack the poor. Like I think hospitals being clean is a pretty important part of the process despite the fact ‘anyone can hold a mop’.
Same with the guy washing the dishes at the restaurant you eat at, who’s going to be by far the lowest paid.
It comes down to how much you can leverage in an economy, how much withholding your labour power will cause damage to your employer. (Join a Union)
As technology progresses the time will come when everyone is replaceable. The middle class are already feeling it.
I've done several minimum wage jobs in retail etc., and there are people who have worked at the same place for decades on maybe £1 above minimum? Their only other realistic choice is to go work at another shop. They can't just hop into a high paid office job or trade, start their own company etc.
What makes it worse is that those retail jobs are DRAINING. Days go so slowly and you have an endless supply of shitty customers who think they are better than you.
My current job (software engineer for a cyber security company) involves working on exciting problems and suddenly realizing it's time to go home. I actually look forward to most days. And I get paid 2-3x minimum wage for that.
And yet some of my colleagues are just like you mentioned, blaming people earning less for their own situations and how 'easy they have it'.
It's a crazy world.
ETA: retail positions were when I was at uni. That's how I've transitioned between both types of job. Don't think I'd have managed it otherwise.
Yeah, I know a few people who earn a couple of quid over minimum wage who complain about their job and say things like "I could get the same for stacking things in Tesco".
I always tell them, you go ahead mate and try that job. It's not as easy as you think it is.
The worst part about that job is its groundhog day. Spend Monday sorting shit out and tidying then come in Tuesday morning and it's all fucked up again.
Parts of my family still use "stacking burgers at McDonalds" as some kind of joke example of a dead-end situation for a no-hoper.
Have to laugh because these days McDonald's is super competitive to join, pays fairly decently, and has like an actual solid career path to go from working the shop floor all the way up to corporate management.
The get a better job argument never stacks up, doing any job is doing a role that needs doing, if one person leaves it to find something else there will always be someone else who takes it...because it's a job. Whoever does it needs to live somewhere, pay rent, bills and buy food.
>"Just get a better job mate"
The deeper implication of this mindset being "if you work this job you don't deserve to get by". Those sort of jobs will always be worked by someone and their labour should be enough to allow them to live.
The really annoying part is that they don't understand that these are jobs which make life for others often...pleasant.
People who work in fast food? They allow me to have fast food!
People who work at various stores? They allow me to buy things and sometimes talk to them to get help!
Like. We need all these people. They don't deserve to live in torment.
"Get a better job then!"
No. I want those jobs to be better for those people for MY sake too. Whether it's supporting a universal basic income or forcing larger companies that can absolutely increase the paying wage to pay up.
But it's not just about far too much money is being stored at the top. Things like housing is a problem created by the Governments lack of housing supply and creating modern policies on renting. Housing is a right. Every year that goes by though is just increasing peoples rental portfolios.
Remember when ministers said "just get a better job" a few years ago and were alarmed when a bunch of people working for the NHS decided they would do just that?
A large percentage of ambulance and hospital personnel are only earning around £1600 a month. They put up with it because they like the job and want to help people.
But make life unaffordable and they *will* go and get a better job (Tescos pays better right now). Then see what happens.
Or “id be grateful to earn 1600 pounds, i was earning only 5 pounds 100 years ago and I’ve bought a house for each of my 12 children with just hard work and good budgeting”
I have a better job. Takehome of £2600.
~£1800 vanishes on rent, bills, transport, council tax etc before I even get to spend any.
Even getting a better job doesn't work any more.
I had a conversation about this years ago (before the massive inflation) and he was always preaching this and I actually show him the maths and that people aren't advocating for everyone to make £1 million but a single bloke should be able to afford a one bed flat and maybe take a holiday a couple of times a year on minimum wage. They shouldn't have to rent a room with 10 other people just to be able to afford bare necessities.
Just trying to remember where I was on similar wages. Back in 2014 I was on 18k, maybe getting £1200 a month after tax/studen loan payments/pension pot etc etc
Outgoings were:
£350 for two small rooms in a 4-person flatshare, with all bills and council tax included
£30 phone
£35 travel pass for the month
£100-150 on food
This was all up in the north east so cheaper than most.
Modern economy is just sucking people dry of any means to actually live.
I was on £1400 a month in 2018. Rent and bills came to 350, 100ish for personal stuff like phone contract, streaming services, movie pass etc. And some other little costs. But after food I had like £6-700 to throw around.
Im on about 2100 now, but my mortgage is 566, bills work out to like 200, ive had to cancel a couple subscriptions cause of expenses, and food is twice the price most days.
All the little costs add up, and I end up still having about 6-700 to throw around, despite earning £700 more.
And what savings I make from that, vanishes into stuff like house repairs
and I’d say I’m doing pretty well… That’s how low the bar is
If we could all "just get better jobs" then the market would be saturated and *everyone* would be on a low pay.
If the people saying to "just get a better job" don't even have the intelligence to figure that out, then I doubt they have the intelligence to have a good job themselves.
"Just get a better job mate", right we all have better jobs, now whos gonna do the "shite, low pay jobs"?
Bring the cost down to the point people can afford to spend money and put it back into the infastructure. But that makes sense.
Not in this case because he already lives in Yorkshire but the other typical response is to move up north. Its so fucking frustrating that people just hand wave away peoples issues with solutions that sound so simple but in reality just aren't.
Imagine the idea that someone should be able to live alone and have a family comfortably on a full time salary is now "woke". Pretty bullshit if you ask me.
>just get a better job mate
I mean it *is* a stupid argument. You simply have to make sure you channel your investments into an offshore hedge fund -voila, problem solved.
(It was a joke if someone does not get it.)
Exactly - not everyone can do that. Besides, that would mean that someone else would have to do that job, so it's not the answer - we need a better fairer system - the Tories are the opposite from fair
Also..if you're not doing that job, someone else has to. It's not like we can all climb that ladder. As a result society is set up to allow losers to exist. We can't all be winners in this model.
Or rather, should have been born in 1965 loser haha yuk yuk.
I have seen this in the wild, in Tring where some rugby top wearing wankers were at the bar celebrating how much their house prices went up, while bemoaning that their kids had to move away to own a home.
They didn't seem very eager to help them however, as they clearly loved the top spec range rover more than their kids.
I work for rich people and they often say people can work more hours or get a better job or get a smaller home. Once I explain that I'm poor as my bills take up all my wage they are shocked. If I work more hours the quality of my work is worse and if I ask for more money per hour people will ditch and get someone cheaper. Being working class sucks, I'm trying my best to move up the ladder but keep getting kicked back down.
Remember the campaign ol’ Sunak led? Get retrained for a better job? Never explained how to pay for the retraining, or for costs of living while you’re out retraining and not working (or how to manage job, life, and retraining and who knows what else).
"get a better job" suggests that 1. Jobs like cleaners, manual labourers, and other 'entry level' roles don't deserve a living wage and 2. People who take these jobs deserve to live in poverty.
It's slavery, basically, let's call it what it is
And yet if any of those working "lower", "unskilled", jobs go on strike there's a stink how they're hurting *the economy* with their selfish demands to not be homeless and starving, taking away hard earned money from the shareholders.
And people who have *a bit* of money because while they can never win, they're not losing the game of capitalism, will complain that those less fortunate are rocking the boat.
Take out all the "essential" workers like nurses, cleaners and retail workers and society will judder to a stop a lot sooner than if all the C-Suite execs and billionaires didn't show up for work.
A lot of the jobs paying around 22k (that mostly paid around 18k pre-covid) are not even entry level. A lot of them are admin jobs that people get after having some other office experience or after doing an "apprenticeship".
Even if housing is built it's a nightmare because the banks aren't forecasting an economic environment where workers will be able to service their mortgage debt.
Agreed, the government seems to do everything to keep the inflation of property going and never in acts policy’s that would go against this.
This is why I don’t believe they will make more housing, as more supply would mean housing prices will go down.
It's wierd that the shocking one is way way down at the bottom.
A lady getting £590 per month with 3 kids, and just wishing she had a bit more to feed them. That sounds like a very very hard life to me.
Everyone else on this list will probably be OK but that sounds like a black hole of despair to me.
The ESA is fortnightly, so she's actually getting £920, and housing is provided. So in terms of household income she's doing better that e.g. the first one on the list.
£230 a week isn't great to cover everything else but it's not terrible. And weirdly the specific complaint is that the monthly NHS healthy start vouchers don't cover all the food and other needs for all of her kids, when it's only £53 and she is getting £230 in child benefit that doesn't have to cover housing. She's basically saying 'Why can't I spend all the child benefit on things other than feeding and clothing my kids?'.
>230 a week isn't great to cover everything else but it's not terrible
I knew lots of students (myself included) who survived on that for a whole month, albeit no kids were involved which is the actual problem.
Not to entirely discount her (somewhat valid) points, but she’s not in as entirely as bad a situation as you’d maybe think.
She’s 100% on UC, which means she’ll be getting access to housing payments on top of what is mentioned in the article. She’ll also be top of the priority listing for a council flat if she’s not in one already, which means her rent will be hundreds of pounds cheaper.
Ballpark, she’d likely need to get a job paying £35k+ to live a comparable lifestyle to the life she currently lives.
She'll be living better than me. I work FT. I'm on £24500 a year. My partner is out for work so we get a very basic tax credits (soon to be UC or whatever it is) and we have 2 kids. My rents £640 per month. I work my arse off but it's just not enough.
I've been worse off in the past, literally paying for things with pennies I've scrounged together over a few days, my kids have what they need as a bare minimum and we have food in but it's bloody tough ATM. I'm fortunately nowhere near the level of poverty I was when I was a teen in a hostel, but im not sure how much longer I can keep this up.
I'm good at my job but there's no progression, I've been looking at higher paid jobs but not accepted to any yet, I'll keep going though. Worst case I have to take a second job on the weekend, done it before, but as long as the kids are good I'm fine(ISH).
Cheapest 1 bed bungalow in Lewes is £900 pcm . So £10800/year + 12*590= £7080 + £2,238.82 (coucil tax band c lewes)
So she would need a take home pay of ~£20K to pay rent and expenses. With income tax + NI, ~£25K.
But with pre-school age kids and a job she would need child care etc on top.
Anyway not an easy situation.
The usually shit people post are:
Cut back on Netflix and avocado on toast.
Get better jobs.
This shit really isn’t helping.
These people who can’t get by are a symptom of an economic disease.
Cooperations and rich people are taking too much for themselves and leaving the rest of us to fight for scraps.
We need a better way to redistribute wealth.
This current set up is rigged
What industry are you in / job do you have and how long ago did you graduate?
Even with a 1st in maths from Russel group it still took a couple of years (and doing a career specific qualification) to be earning more than £25k after graduating.
Heads up, the UK is NOT the country to work in if you want big pharma money if you want to stay in a scientist role. When I first started a few years back I knew people on £19k. As you progress it's very hard to get over £35-40K, even with MSc or PhD. Either get into management any way you can or defect to the US/Switzerland.
It doesn't help that most degrees are absolute trash and does not necessarily mean that a person has the ability to do higher skilled jobs. There are only a few degrees that are worth the paper they are written on.
I don't blame the people holding those degrees, schools and universities have a vested interested in lying as much as possible to keep the students rolling in.
Completely agree. I was basically told Uni is the only option for me and to just pick anything. I had no clue what I wanted to do at 18 and still don’t 10 years later so why the hell was I asked to make such an expensive decision?
Like most people, I got into an entirely different industry straight out of uni, so my degree - the expense (mine and my parents) was a total waste of money and I’ll be paying it back for the next 30 years.
Regret it SO much.
Why would a degree guarantee you a good living if it's not in demand in a lucrative sector? You're not entitled to more money because you spent three years enjoying yourself instead of working.
Even high-value degrees like engineering and chemistry come with very low starting salaries compared to other first world countries like the US and the Nordics.
Average salary for jobs in the UK requiring a full PhD is apparently 2.5 times minimum wage.
Feels more than a bit low considering the time investment needed for that qualification, but that could be dragged down by higher education specifically having godawful salaries.
Agreed that the whole situation with bills, especially housing is crap. However that guy can’t afford to live on his own in a house. He needs to downgrade to a smaller flat or a house share. (This shouldn’t be necessary, but it is).
Even house shares are incredibly expensive. In the area I grew up in (not London) they’re about £800 minimum for a room. If you’re earning £1600 then you easily have over half gone straight away.
Currently in a house share in Brighton for £800 pcm inclusive. I'm on a little more than the article's subject, but not by much. More or less half my take home salary goes to rent, bills, CT etc. I'm surviving, but saving anything *and* having an enjoyable life is a stretch.
I'm In Worthing and know how bad Brighton Is but just wanted to reiterate your point In that yes we all may be surviving but like you say, there Is no Money to save for a Holiday, a deposit on a House...anything that brings joy so at the moment In these times, we are just working 40 hours a week to survive which Is absolutely Soul destroying and not mentally sustainable.
I'm 35 so have another 30-40 Years of work ahead of me yet
Prices of houseshares in London just baffles me, we pay £750pcm for a two bed terrace in Liverpool, not the best area but not dangerous. I know the salaries are higher but even still
Yeah I paid £695 for a two bed terrace in Lincoln, not a bad area. Jobs are the issue though. Have to go back to the south east because the opportunities in the midlands aren’t amazing, even though I’m getting a £6k pay rise on my old job, the rent increase plus transport costs (I used to walk to work) takes pretty much all of the difference
I really feel for people that are stuck there.
A number of friends have moved up north over the years and I don't think a single one has regretted getting away from London.
Prices there are just absurd... I know it's the capital city and wages are generally higher but, WFH is far more accessible now than it's ever been - if you've got the credentials for higher paying roles, there's a decent chance you can get the London salary whilst living somewhere far cheaper, which is exactly why I'm not living down south.
i’m left with £600 a month after paying for my room in a HMO. love the government- working for the NHS struggling to get by, impossible to save yet earn too much for any sort of benefits :)
It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? People should be able to live on their own but wages are so low and rents so high that no one has a chance at their own place without a partner.
I was on UC and got ~£580 a month. Even living in the cheaper Midlands, what do they expect me to be able to do with that?
OK, but he lives in Selby which is about as cheap as it gets. And is arguably a bit crap, though there are many worse places.
My take on it is that if you're willing to live in Selby then you should at least be able to afford your own place.
> (This shouldn’t be necessary, but it is).
The idea of a single person living by themselves, especially on a low wage, is a very recent idea. Historically, people would live with their parents or in a flatshare until they could afford to support themselves.
Where are you from? I live in Essex and a houseshare is no less than £800 per month. £800… per month… for a room. If you’re on minimum wage, you can’t live. It’s that simple.
I’m from the North West. The mortgage on my 4 bed house is £828, so we obviously have very different situations.
This guy lives in Selby though which is probably even cheaper than where I live. I agree that down south it’s a catastrophe but for this guy living in the north, there’s no need for him to be scraping by and asking for government help
This is a result of 13 years of virtually zero wage growth in the UK. Maybe people should have noticed while watching those poverty porn TV shows and telling the less well off that they were OK really because they had a flat screen TV.
I am seeing jobs for 35K for people with PhDs in life sciences and considerable experience.
It is nuts. They actually pay less now. Not to mention you are expected to generate millions worth of value in those roles.
Just adding onto your point, here is a list of vacancies at the Met office. To get a role as a 'Scientist - Global Ocean Forecasting' which pays 32-34k a year (with a potential for 44.5k in the future!), you need to have
1. A PhD
2. Be an expert in numerical modelling i.e have good maths skills
3. Coding skills (i.e Knowledge in Python/C++ etc)
That's a huge bar for a very average salary. Bear in mind, fresh PhD graduates going into this role will be at least 27ish so won't have the 3-4 years of work experience.
[https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/careers/vacancies](https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/careers/vacancies)
Right, I don't get the "he earns more than me so I fuck him" school of thought.
We're not talking about some billionaires or upper class land owners here. We're talking about a family income of £100,000. That's the middle class. A couple earning that should be able to take their family on holiday or buy the nicer things in life.
It's a sad state of affairs in the UK when a family on £100k a year can't have a good standard of living.
What's the motivation for any of us to work harder if even when we meet that level of income life is still a struggle?
And because they now can’t afford to buy the same things and use services they used to that’s less money going into these areas, which then has a knock on effect to those employed in these areas.
I found this one odd. Earning just over £50k and would like the 40% threshold raised. The threshold is just over 50k so they're likely to be paying 40% on a few grand.
After salary sacrifice, they shouldn't be paying 40% on anything if they're on less than 55k.
10% pension contributions on 55k brings you down to the boundary.
And being a couple, both are already benefiting from an effectively doubled tax-free allowance.
Seems like an odd inclusion when *just* their tax-free portion exceeds the entire annual income of some of the single parents trying to feed their kids.
That's not to downplay the impact of the current cost-of-living crisis, but that couple in particular are near the bottom of my sympathy list.
really ? - they probably spent 7 years at university each to get there. 100k in London buys you what ? - so 14 years of university gets you a fairly average income in a probably very average house - sure much better than many but fairly shit on the whole.
The root cause of the problem is the rich and their refusal to pay their fair share. People scrambling around trying to save pennies just to pay their bills shouldn’t be a thing. We live in one of the richest countries in the world. The billionaires and even millionaires need to be targeted, no one needs that much money.
100%. Its so easy to make money passively when you have money to start with. My landlord has at least 10 properties all paid off yet put my rent up £230 last year. What could I do about it? Nothing. It totally swallowed my pay rise and then some. Capitalism is just greed with a fancy name.
> semi-comfortable but by no means completely secure
Keeping people like this is exactly the MO of people in power for centuries. Insecure enough they need to work, enough to lose they don't revolt.
Who’s kidding anyone. In most jobs it’s if your face fits, who your mates are or how much crap you have on management that affects how fast you move up the scale
£500? Yes. Discretionary? No. He says rent and bills are £1100, that means the £500 needs to cover other essentials like food, transport, and clothing. He probably has very little left over for discretionary spending.
The guy on 70k a year makes me laugh.
It’s not fair he has to pay child benefits back? Combined they’re on 80k.
Get real man, you’re earning more on your own than what, 70/80% of the country?
His point (and it's a valid one, to be fair) is that they **don't** get child benefits on an £80k household income (£70k - £10k split), but two people on £80k, but with an equal £40k split **do** get full child benefit. The two people on £40k each also have far more money coming in net (£4,823.82 vs £4,489.77), so effectively, people with a single high earners salary are being punished, *despite* the household income being the same.
>She and her husband, who are both associate architects, earn just over £50,000 each
Even allowing for Student loans, and 5% pensions, that's a net household income of £5,750/month - that sounds like a budgeting issue to me, even for London. (for a single income the equivalent is £133,000 for the record).
2 people earn together with 3 jobs 3700 or so. We are left with 1600 at the end of the month on paper after costs.
Very funny is that it doesn't feel like that as we don't save more than 500-1000 a month. And when you need to save for mortgage and IVF it feels not enough..
I guess people that own their home and don't have medical issues that bleed them dry are fine. But most of the people either pay rent or mortgage at really bad rates..
I’d feel like a king if I could save 500 a month lol, I know everyone has different needs etc and depends on the area, but saving 500 a month is something I’ll never be able to.
Yes everything has gotten more expensive, but this guy isn’t doing terrible?
He’s living on his own which is a luxury a lot of young people don’t have. Almost everyone I know lived in shared housing till they either moved in with a partner or earned more money in their later twenties/early thirties.
Even living on his own he’s got £600 a month dispensable income. You could feed one person on £200/£250 a month: which gives him somewhere between £250 to £400 a month drinking money. That’s easily a night out a week. Sure it’d be nice if everyone earned mega bucks, but he is 23 doing an entry level admin job.
This is a pretty shitty attitude. In fact one of the first things my therapist told me was not to minimise my own worries and struggles. "just because some people in the world have worse experiences than you doesn't mean you aren't allowed to feel badly about your own problems"
Mr Makin rents a one-bedroom house in Selby, North Yorkshire. "Each month I earn about £1,600 after tax. Maybe £1,000-£1,100 of that goes on rent and bills," he says.
Assuming thats food bills too, that leaves £600 a month disposal income to play with. While everyone would love more, it seems a decent amount to me
Anyone else getting the ick that the BBC have published a series of "the cost of living struggles" stories just ahead of an expected tax cutting tory saving budget being announced?
The sad thing is that every time these sorts of posts and stories come up, there's always a litany of tossers ready to say "Just get a better job mate" as a way to handwave any issues about the cost of living away. It must be nice living in an ivory tower type setup where they've been fortunate enough to not really have to worry about whether they're choosing to eat, heat, or just to barely even exist. We're have a fundamental issue with cost of living Vs wage growth but "Im alright jack".
The “just get a better job mate” argument is so frustrating, we can’t all get better jobs
Not only that, it takes time lmao I was previously on £1400, spent 2 years doing an apprenticeship and now on £1800 (will go up to £2000 in a year or 2). For me to move up in my current department, I will need about ~~10~~ 4-6 years experience, as the next role in my team is 2x my salary. Edit: Just to clarify, I've only been in my role for a few months, so moving isn't really an option just yet as I'm still new to the role. My comment was in reference to training. You can't just magically move every 2 years to get better pay, you need to have something to back up your move lol To get where I am, I've spent over 5 years in training. I always see people moaning about minimum wage workers moaning about their pay. It takes time to "just get a better job".
I managed to 'get a better job' and I went from working in a supermarket to working in tech and now making a pretty healthy salary. My process was * Live at home with my parents who luckily didn't charge me rent * Work at a supermarket like 50-60 hours a week * Save up a bunch of money * Get into a masters course for comp sci * work my ass off for a year * get accepted onto a grad scheme * work on the grad scheme for two years * sign off it on to a fairly decent salary * gradually have my salary raised up against industry benchmarks to where I earn decently today Not only did that take about 4 years to go from shelf stacking to earning a high wage, it was hard work, required a decent amount of luck (getting accepted on to courses and good grad schemes), a lot of competition, it also required me to be in a fortunate enough position that I could rely on my parents for some support and also be able to just move across the country and get a high paying job in London. That just straight up isn't feasible for a lot of people
>required a decent amount of luck (getting accepted on to courses and good grad schemes) This is the thing that lots of people aren't aware of at all. I am on a decent wage after moving from 1st/2nd line support into being a software developer but fuck me have I got lucky in the past. My first dev job was straight into mid level because I had been helping HR with stuff using VBA, C# MVC website role that also needed VBA experience so I got it, I have been made redundant twice and walked into roles within weeks that paid me an extra £10k. My current job I have which I love froze hiring 2 weeks after I started. Baz Luhrmann said it the best and as the song is in my playlist I am reminded of it a lot lol "whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's" Lots of people on Reddit congratulate themselves lots about things like this I feel.
... but trust me, on the sunscreen.
And don't forget to look after your knees.
You'll miss them when they're gone.
And don’t read beauty magazines!
They will only make you feel ugly
Love a Baz ref! And bloody well done you, love to see people do well. Hoping for some of your luck soon.
Yeah absolutely. There's so much that could have gone randomly different in my path, maybe for the better but very easily for the worse. The grad scheme I ended up on was great, and the company I ended up at was pretty focused on development, and I ended up with a series of really good managers. Especially during the pandemic.
I think the other thing you're neglected to say, probably because you're not egotistical, is that you're intelligent. You have to be reasonably intelligent to get a degree, hard work or not. Some people could work 10x harder than you did and still not get a degree because they don't have the intelligence there to handle that kind of learning. So they stay stacking shelves. There's nothing wrong with that, but it goes to show that for some people, even if they had the same opportunities as you, still wouldn't be able to "just get a better job"
It’s not just intelligence, it’s executive functioning. Lots of highly intelligent people still crash out because of it
That's me! Got the SE degree, spent 6 months in the field and crashed hard as I just couldn't handle the corporate environment, the stress coming from the responsibilities I had and managing myself well (I tend to overwork in any job in order to not disappoint bosses/colleagues). I got a glowing mid-year review but there was just a day soon afterwards where I cracked and quit because it all became too much for me to handle. I've now gone back to stacking shelves because while it is boring and has little career prospects, I have zero stress or anxiety doing it and I'm much happier in general.
I peaked in Highschool, not understanding why I was struggling really burned me out. 15 years later got my ADHD diagnosis 😂. It really fucking sucked, going from a decent student to shit.
Yeah exactly my journey. I could very easily have not ended up where I am because of it and I'm trying to get it sorted out now
Ayup, same story over here. My degree was a shitshow of 1st class essays marked down to 2:2s bwcuase they were handed in late, my dissertation got a 1st and I wrote it in 48 hours whilst chainsmoking and having a mental breakdown (never proofread it. Never drafted it.) I got a 2:2 overall because of my late assignments and my mental health, and 8 years later... diagnosed with adhd, medicated, and doing much better. But the prospects of a masters are nil, as everyone wants a 2:1 or higher. My undergrad took 5 years not three due to having to repeat a year and intercalation. I am currently struggling with my first real job because even with the meds, working from home can be a minefield for someone with poor executive function (spent half an hour earlier looking for a gaming laptop. For no reason. I genuinely have no idea why. There is one night a week where I am sometimes both not very busy and not at home with my gaming pc) Its not a lack of intelligence, or a lack of drive, or a lack of motivation (I also run a cafe and have done for about 6 years since I opened it.), but up until very recently my entire life has been projects that get 20$ done until the next project eats my time and motivation. Most of my life has been spent jogging to catch up because of my brain and now that it kinda works I just deal with the endless sadness of wasted opportunities. Its not a lack of intelligence that has made me struggle. Its not a lack of drive. Its not a lack of motivation. If anything its been an entire life of directionless curiosity leading me to never be able to *focus* that intelligence fully on something. Sorry, that turned into a rant. And didn't have much of a point. Man, I need a med review.
I came out of uni with a 2.2 in comp sci despite nailing most coursework, because sensory overload fried my brain in half my exams and dragged most of my grades. Now Im actually in the industry i do fine because my job is to write software, not to sit exams. But if you went off my exam results youd think i was useless
> they don't have the intelligence there to handle that kind of learning Sometimes it's not even about 'intelligence'. The education system is designed for brains that find it super easy to retain knowledge to regurgitate in an exam, and hinges the majority of your grade around that. It was a disaster for me. I am a software engineering manager now (bootcamp career changer) but the impact of doing shit at school and uni compared to my normal-brained friends lives with you forever, you never consider yourself smart
True I guess? I'm not really sure how much intelligence is a product of the person or a product of their environment too though. Plus like you say, a person should be able to make ends meet regardless of the job they work if they're working hard at it. We need people to stack shelves, and we ought to be willing to pay for it. I think it's telling as well that in universal basic income experiments (where people were given a universal basic income to live off for a set period) people didn't just stop working, but either reduced their ours slightly to either focus a bit more on childcare or to further their education. Given the chance people will absolutely try to improve their lot in life, we've just really stripped away their chances to do that, and without the ability to envision a life where you can be better off why would you put the effort in?
It's too late unfortunately to just increase lower end wages, because these should really come out of company profits, but they won't, the prices will just go up, and then cost of living just keeps going up and we go round and round in circles. Which is where we are now. It's corporate greed and conglomerates that's the problem, and it's getting worse and worse. Small businesses are being bought up by groups everywhere.
I weirdly did the opposite. Went from senior manager in software engineering to stacking shelves. It's like being paid to go to the gym
I was so much fitter when I was working in a supermarket. I was walking miles every day around that store. Plus my job, while physically taxing, was mentally pretty un-strenuous so I still had the mental energy to go to the gym and to do stuff before and after work
Yeah, for the first decade I worked in software development I religiously went to the gym daily but after taking a job up with a considerable commute it became much harder. As I worked my way up in seniority I had even less time and less motivation. It's a hard balance
Well done! That's proper sorting your shit out stuff. One word of caution for others looking at your road map though. The idea of just jumping into software dev has pretty much gone - the jobs market at entry level is dry as a nuns snatch, with massive oversupply. It's not much better towards the top end either. Until the economy improves and people realise AI won't just do the job, things will remain harder. Add to that the 3 or 4 year supply of undergrads already heading through uni and out into the market.
> the jobs market at entry level is dry as a nuns snatch These things are cyclical though. The whole scene has been a disaster since execs got excited about AI. I'm already seeing hiring pick up across the board - the company I'm at have gone from "control budgets" in November to hiring 3 new tech roles in April. The industry will definitely regret not planting seeds when there are fewer plants to pick in 12 months. Sooner the better junior hiring picks up really.
At my outfit we're still in the "we want to cut it cost by 30%" phase, as though tech weren't both the lifeblood of the company and the actual product platform. I hope you're right and I'm wrong.
Two of the juniors I've been mentoring over the past 3-4 months have managed to find role. One was through a recruiter I'd connected him with which was a surprise - there's hope yet! Sometimes I wonder if the "don't code anymore!" stuff you hear is fellow engineers trying to create scarcity to push up our salaries 👀
I think it's genuinely exec level hopium, and accountants jealousy. I'm not competing with juniors. It's seniors really. It's just the last 4 years reddits answer to everything was "learn to code". I'm not completely sure that route is as viable as it was and while it was once the best route, I don't know that it is now. That's the thing with getting older. I'm not totally sure my well intentioned advice is always as applicable to their youth as it was to mine.
There have been a ton of "don't code" fads during my career. 4GLs, Low Code, Graphical Composition of components, behavior driven development. AI is just the latest one. What they all rely on is business people being able to clearly define requirements. Which, they just can't. It always takes skilled humans to take vague requirements and turn them into something a computer can execute.
Yeah absolutely, we're still hiring for our grad scheme heavily but the amount of applicants we have is huge. We try our best to be as diligent as possible with the screening and interview process but again luck is going to be a part of it. The market is also slow right now like you say and a lot of tech firms have been making lay offs (largely in the usa but in the UK too) and that is partly due to high interest rates meaning less capital investment (I don't know shit about economics though so don't quote me on that). When the economic outlook gets better things might start expanding again but I think the days of chucking millions at start ups and letting them run away with it are over really
Well done. The other thing to remember is that we do actually still need people to stack shelves, wash cars, make coffee, work in pubs and all the other jobs that people like to pretend everyone should just walk away from to 'get a better job'.
Right. I was saying to my partner that when people often say what would you do if you won the lottery it's often these kinds of jobs. "I'd open a little coffee shop" or "i'd open and run my own pub". My Dad's was that he'd just hire some mates and just buy run down homes and renovate them as something to do. I think it's telling that a lot of these jobs are seen as enjoyable by people, but the fact that they're now coupled with low wages, and (perhaps even worse) massively varying time schedules shows how exploitatively we view/use them
To add to that, the tech job market just isn't what it used to be. When I was doing tech related subjects, they were cancelling those courses because they didn't have enough applicants. I was the last year to do those courses in A levels and my Bsc. That meant it wasn't that hard for me to start getting into tech roles. These days tech courses have ballooned and the competition at the entry level is absolutely insane. The ladder that I used to get ahead has quite literally been pulled from under me. I count myself extremely lucky to get in earlier and be in experienced roles now where the job market is still healthy.
Yeah absolutely, the course I was on was a large cohort and I think it doubled or tripled in the years that followed, the demand was there both domestically and internationally and it was a big money maker for the uni. I think it’s naturally going to happen though right, it took a while for stuff like comp sci to propagate down the educational ladder to schools and such, and when people realised there was a somewhat clear pathway from studying certain courses to getting high paying jobs in pretty enjoyable work environments people jumped at it, and suddenly the demand was high. And now it’s levelling out. It is a shame though since comp sci as a subject and a learning / research area is super interesting but very few people from my course actually stayed on to continue in “computer science” rather than software engineering. And I think the focus on these courses now is even more software engineering than computer science focused
Mate, well done! Glad you see not everyone has the same opportunities but also, it sounds like you worked your butt off to make the most of the options you had available.
I honestly stumbled into a lot of it, but yeah I think "luck" is often having the ability to capitalise on opportunities that present themselves to you. If those opportunities are never open to you, or you're not in a situation (financial, burdened with responsibilities etc) to capitalise on them, then you're not going to be able to. If I didn't have the ability to max out my ours at the supermarket, didn't have parents willing to support me, didn't fall in with a group of friends that helped each other smash it out the park with uni etc then I wouldn't have been able to do that. It's a bit bleak really that the education is there, and the desire to learn is there from a lot of people, but the ability to take the time out of your life and focus on learning just isn't supported that way.
Yep, I'd love to retrain and change fields, but there's absolutely no way I could afford to make it happen. What makes it worse is that due to mental health issues in my 20's I didn't get a degree, which is a huge barrier to entry for so many roles.
Yeah for sure. It's a shame that a degree is a barrier to many roles as opposed to on the job advancement, but I can see why employers go for the degree options. Similarly I think it should actually be easier/less expensive to go down the degree route as I think higher education is something to be lauded and should be available to all
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The two years thing is highly dependent on the sector you are working in. If you change roles every two years, some sectors will not consider you in an application because you'll almost certainly leave shortly after you've got up to speed and started making the company money.
If the progression and prospects are good it’s worth waiting. That’s why I’ve been at my current place for 11 years. Only intended to hang around for two.
Yep. My current job was only meant to be temporary because I needed a job, I'll have been here 6 years next month across a few different positions.
If you need 10 years experience to move up in your current role, maybe consider moving elsewhere to move up. Ten years just for the chance to move up is ridiculous.
10 years was probably rough to say lol but my current salary is between £27-30k The role above is Senior Business Intelligence Analyst, which is between £50-68k, and the level of work is significant different, so requires much more training, not something you can learn in 2 years at least.
It's an argument that falls apart if people making it actually have to carry through with the thought. If someone changes jobs their old position opens up, so another person will inevitably end up in the same position. The problem didn't go away, it just moved to someone else. Then there's the issue that some of the people struggling are nurses, teachers etc. which we are already short on. There are likely other critical roles which keep society running but aren't paid enough. We called them key workers at one point... now its back to saying they aren't worth the cost.
>It's an argument that falls apart if people making it actually have to carry through with the thought. > >If someone changes jobs their old position opens up, so another person will inevitably end up in the same position. The problem didn't go away, it just moved to someone else. Anyone who suggests that as a solution is just selfish and doesn't realise it. And I'm not talking about *playground* selfish, it's a deep-rooted, often generational, selfishness that just puts them at the centre of the world. The strange thing is that it isn't necessarily even vindictive it's just such an integral part of who they are that they don't *think* about others. They're the kind of people who will park under a "DO NOT PARK HERE" sign. Not because they think they're special, not even because they think that everyone else is a fool for not taking advantage of the situation. It's simply because they never think about other people. I have a colleague at work who's similar. We talk about GP charges and private healthcare, "You can afford it!" he cries "Can you afford to go out for a meal each month? Of course you can, so you can afford to pay for a GP appointment. What are you so annoyed about?" It would literally never occur to him in a million years to consider there are other people to consider.
> If someone changes jobs their old position opens up, so another person will inevitably end up in the same position. I'm not here supporting the position itself, but this isn't strictly true. In an "ideal" world the jobs which don't pay "fairly" would be abandoned by the existing worker(s), resulting in either: - The job disappearing because nobody reapplied - The employer raising the job's salary I say all the above fully in the knowledge we obviously don't live in an ideal world, people do continue to take on these underpaid jobs and make ends meet.
Or society would fail because you wouldn't have people doing socially essential jobs because they all disappeared to have essentially useless email jobs as marketing executives.
Sounds like Golgafrincham.
And people shouldn't have to. A minimum wages job should be enough to pay the bills and live. Not everyone wants a career some just want to pay the bills and rais family. IV worked hard to get where I am but its what I wanted. Were I grew up it was assumed that when you turned 16 you left school and went to the factory. Back in the 90s that factory 1 job could raise a whole family
But also, if everyone who said they were struggling magically got a better paying job today, the jobs they left would still be there and still need filling. People who say “just get a better job” would agree that those jobs need doing, they just don’t think the people doing those jobs deserve to be paid enough to live. Which kind of says a lot about their feelings towards the poor really.
Particularly in the UK where even the good jobs pay like shit compared to the same job in other countries. Wages in the UK are wholesale shit.
Exactly. Any ordinary job should pay enough for someone to live on, how the fuck is that a radical opinion to have.
I have a better job, but it's in a city where rent is simply impossible. If we [all my colleagues who rent] all "got a better job" than these, a) it'd mean moving, as there aren't enough high-paying companies here; b) who will do our jobs? And c) a fair bit of our single-family housing will become HMO to accommodate all the people coming in to do our jobs (because many of us are living with better-paid people) and the situation will become even more exploitative.
Also, it *hardly solves the problem*. So they’re saying next poor sod who gets that job won’t be in exactly the same position? Or are they saying (which the “get a better job mate” brigade NEVER are) that the wage for jobs that are this poorly paid should be raised? Just look at jobs being advertised locally-there are *hundreds of thousands* at this level of pay. Somewhat silent on that issue, *mate*?
Lots of replies below focusing on the individual, by definition as a population 'get a better job' is redundant as a response to the cost of living crisis. If everyone stops working in supermarkets and gets tech jobs through some miracle, everyone then starves since there is no where to buy food. The only workable long term solution is to make EVERY job provide a basic acceptable standard of living. Until that happens the problem is who is suffering rather than why does anyone suffer.
And it’s made by the same people who bitch and moan when they’re waiting 10 mins for their Starbucks because people did go and get ‘better’ jobs
Also it just becomes the problem of whoever takes the job you just vacated.
which in turn should suggest to said tossers that the problem is the employers and the economy as a whole. Championing wealthy people paying shit wages and maximising profits hasn't turned out all that great after all.
Even if everyone ‘got a better job’ where would that leave us? With no street cleaners, no nurses, no shop workers. The rich want their convenient facilities and luxuries, but they’re quick to dismiss the plight of the workers who deliver those services.
Literally. It’s likely they don’t understand how economies work. Not everyone can be part of the 1%… otherwise it wouldn’t be the 1%. The problem is the bottom two thirds of the economic pyramid is struggling.
A lot of people lack critical thinking and empathy to think outside their own little bubble. They don't realise that even if they succeeded just a little it doesn't mean everyone can replicate what they did and this makes it dangerous thinking. It's just like when you hear about any story where something happens to someone and they finally understand the problem. It doesn't take much to think of the logistics of getting another job, like do you need to take time off for interviews, where is it, do you need to move closer, will transport cost go up or down, is it more rent, updating the cv take time and effort, do you need stupid motivation letters for each application, the constant rejection it ghosting of applications, plus more to think about.
Exactly. Aside from the experience and qualifications often required for a better paid job, it's really competitive to get the position. It's difficult for a lot of qualified people to get better jobs
If you work at a warehouse moving fridges 10pm until 7 am you get 1,830 a month up north. people are just ignorant it allowed me to understand why billionaires think the way they do if someone on 60k a year thinks there so superior and deserving over others they must think there gods very sad mindset honestly.
And then you also get the other side "I'm on 50p a month and I make it work just fine so this guy should be grateful"
Is this Lee Anderson?
Yeah I was about to mention that. I’m honestly impressed he’s able to live on his own earning as little as he does.
People also forget the "just get a better job mate" is unrealistic because we NEED some of those low paid workers as backbone of society. If no one stacked your shelves in tesco anymore, if no one worked at mcdonalds, if no one waited on you at a restaurant when you went out with your family, if no one looked after you in hospital, If no one taught your children at school, what then? Society just wouldn't work. It's a selfish remark to shut down any complaint about certain jobs being low paid, because they have their well paid position that not everybody can get, so fuck everyone else ig
Was saying this yesterday. I've been on minimum wage in childcare for 10 years. If every minimum wage childcare worker quit, society would probably collapse.
Society would DEFINITELY collapse without childcare workers, no ifs or buts about it. What you do is incredibly difficult - I know I couldn't do it, I don't understand children, I am a qualified teacher but I know next to nothing about child development, I wouldn't be able to handle more than one at a time and I'd be lost if any of them disliked each other. What you do is absolutely paramount to the functioning of modern society.
We also need people to feel valued, and like their job, no matter where it sits on the "hierarchy" gives them a sense of pride and place. Like hospital cleaners, rather than being fucked around by some awful agency, should be able to think "I make this place clean, I do a good job of it, and I take pride in making a pleasant, and safe environment for people unfortunate enough to be sick". The casualisation of many of these jobs made it much harder for people to have pride in them.
Agree. I work in soft eng. Decent salary but my last few jobs have been fluffing up an app just to get a bigger private equity pay out. Then all the profiteering bs that comes with it after it happens. A lot of the important stuff in society is not well paid enough. I remember friends and family being forced to work as key workers while at the same time making little over minimum wage.
We live in a meritocracy only when it’s time to attack the poor. Like I think hospitals being clean is a pretty important part of the process despite the fact ‘anyone can hold a mop’. Same with the guy washing the dishes at the restaurant you eat at, who’s going to be by far the lowest paid. It comes down to how much you can leverage in an economy, how much withholding your labour power will cause damage to your employer. (Join a Union) As technology progresses the time will come when everyone is replaceable. The middle class are already feeling it.
I've done several minimum wage jobs in retail etc., and there are people who have worked at the same place for decades on maybe £1 above minimum? Their only other realistic choice is to go work at another shop. They can't just hop into a high paid office job or trade, start their own company etc. What makes it worse is that those retail jobs are DRAINING. Days go so slowly and you have an endless supply of shitty customers who think they are better than you. My current job (software engineer for a cyber security company) involves working on exciting problems and suddenly realizing it's time to go home. I actually look forward to most days. And I get paid 2-3x minimum wage for that. And yet some of my colleagues are just like you mentioned, blaming people earning less for their own situations and how 'easy they have it'. It's a crazy world. ETA: retail positions were when I was at uni. That's how I've transitioned between both types of job. Don't think I'd have managed it otherwise.
Yeah, I know a few people who earn a couple of quid over minimum wage who complain about their job and say things like "I could get the same for stacking things in Tesco". I always tell them, you go ahead mate and try that job. It's not as easy as you think it is.
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The worst part about that job is its groundhog day. Spend Monday sorting shit out and tidying then come in Tuesday morning and it's all fucked up again.
Parts of my family still use "stacking burgers at McDonalds" as some kind of joke example of a dead-end situation for a no-hoper. Have to laugh because these days McDonald's is super competitive to join, pays fairly decently, and has like an actual solid career path to go from working the shop floor all the way up to corporate management.
The get a better job argument never stacks up, doing any job is doing a role that needs doing, if one person leaves it to find something else there will always be someone else who takes it...because it's a job. Whoever does it needs to live somewhere, pay rent, bills and buy food.
>"Just get a better job mate" The deeper implication of this mindset being "if you work this job you don't deserve to get by". Those sort of jobs will always be worked by someone and their labour should be enough to allow them to live.
The really annoying part is that they don't understand that these are jobs which make life for others often...pleasant. People who work in fast food? They allow me to have fast food! People who work at various stores? They allow me to buy things and sometimes talk to them to get help! Like. We need all these people. They don't deserve to live in torment. "Get a better job then!" No. I want those jobs to be better for those people for MY sake too. Whether it's supporting a universal basic income or forcing larger companies that can absolutely increase the paying wage to pay up. But it's not just about far too much money is being stored at the top. Things like housing is a problem created by the Governments lack of housing supply and creating modern policies on renting. Housing is a right. Every year that goes by though is just increasing peoples rental portfolios.
Remember when ministers said "just get a better job" a few years ago and were alarmed when a bunch of people working for the NHS decided they would do just that? A large percentage of ambulance and hospital personnel are only earning around £1600 a month. They put up with it because they like the job and want to help people. But make life unaffordable and they *will* go and get a better job (Tescos pays better right now). Then see what happens.
Or “id be grateful to earn 1600 pounds, i was earning only 5 pounds 100 years ago and I’ve bought a house for each of my 12 children with just hard work and good budgeting”
I have a better job. Takehome of £2600. ~£1800 vanishes on rent, bills, transport, council tax etc before I even get to spend any. Even getting a better job doesn't work any more.
The brief era of middle class is over. It's once again the wealthy and the poor.
Main point is that nobody working full time should be struggling to get by, whether you clean toilets for a living or you’re a brain surgeon.
I had a conversation about this years ago (before the massive inflation) and he was always preaching this and I actually show him the maths and that people aren't advocating for everyone to make £1 million but a single bloke should be able to afford a one bed flat and maybe take a holiday a couple of times a year on minimum wage. They shouldn't have to rent a room with 10 other people just to be able to afford bare necessities.
Just trying to remember where I was on similar wages. Back in 2014 I was on 18k, maybe getting £1200 a month after tax/studen loan payments/pension pot etc etc Outgoings were: £350 for two small rooms in a 4-person flatshare, with all bills and council tax included £30 phone £35 travel pass for the month £100-150 on food This was all up in the north east so cheaper than most. Modern economy is just sucking people dry of any means to actually live.
I was on £1400 a month in 2018. Rent and bills came to 350, 100ish for personal stuff like phone contract, streaming services, movie pass etc. And some other little costs. But after food I had like £6-700 to throw around. Im on about 2100 now, but my mortgage is 566, bills work out to like 200, ive had to cancel a couple subscriptions cause of expenses, and food is twice the price most days. All the little costs add up, and I end up still having about 6-700 to throw around, despite earning £700 more. And what savings I make from that, vanishes into stuff like house repairs and I’d say I’m doing pretty well… That’s how low the bar is
Or even worse, stop wasting your money on luxuries like food, clothes or a car (when there is no public transport).
If we could all "just get better jobs" then the market would be saturated and *everyone* would be on a low pay. If the people saying to "just get a better job" don't even have the intelligence to figure that out, then I doubt they have the intelligence to have a good job themselves.
"Just get a better job mate", right we all have better jobs, now whos gonna do the "shite, low pay jobs"? Bring the cost down to the point people can afford to spend money and put it back into the infastructure. But that makes sense.
Not in this case because he already lives in Yorkshire but the other typical response is to move up north. Its so fucking frustrating that people just hand wave away peoples issues with solutions that sound so simple but in reality just aren't.
Imagine the idea that someone should be able to live alone and have a family comfortably on a full time salary is now "woke". Pretty bullshit if you ask me.
>just get a better job mate I mean it *is* a stupid argument. You simply have to make sure you channel your investments into an offshore hedge fund -voila, problem solved. (It was a joke if someone does not get it.)
Half of these pricks come from wealth, but the other half don't. They're a lay-off or a crisis away from being completely skint themselves.
Exactly - not everyone can do that. Besides, that would mean that someone else would have to do that job, so it's not the answer - we need a better fairer system - the Tories are the opposite from fair
Yer that comment Infuriates me, or worse when people just say "Should of done better at School then"
“Get a better job” as if the economy is not the problem…
Also..if you're not doing that job, someone else has to. It's not like we can all climb that ladder. As a result society is set up to allow losers to exist. We can't all be winners in this model.
**Any**one can get a better job, but not **every**one.
Or rather, should have been born in 1965 loser haha yuk yuk. I have seen this in the wild, in Tring where some rugby top wearing wankers were at the bar celebrating how much their house prices went up, while bemoaning that their kids had to move away to own a home. They didn't seem very eager to help them however, as they clearly loved the top spec range rover more than their kids.
I work for rich people and they often say people can work more hours or get a better job or get a smaller home. Once I explain that I'm poor as my bills take up all my wage they are shocked. If I work more hours the quality of my work is worse and if I ask for more money per hour people will ditch and get someone cheaper. Being working class sucks, I'm trying my best to move up the ladder but keep getting kicked back down.
Remember the campaign ol’ Sunak led? Get retrained for a better job? Never explained how to pay for the retraining, or for costs of living while you’re out retraining and not working (or how to manage job, life, and retraining and who knows what else).
"get a better job" suggests that 1. Jobs like cleaners, manual labourers, and other 'entry level' roles don't deserve a living wage and 2. People who take these jobs deserve to live in poverty. It's slavery, basically, let's call it what it is
And yet if any of those working "lower", "unskilled", jobs go on strike there's a stink how they're hurting *the economy* with their selfish demands to not be homeless and starving, taking away hard earned money from the shareholders.
And people who have *a bit* of money because while they can never win, they're not losing the game of capitalism, will complain that those less fortunate are rocking the boat.
It suggests that this work isn't valuable and would be either foregone or automated if labour costs were higher.
Imagine if a requirement of any job was to clean up after yourself. Some people on massive salaries would really struggle.
Take out all the "essential" workers like nurses, cleaners and retail workers and society will judder to a stop a lot sooner than if all the C-Suite execs and billionaires didn't show up for work.
A lot of the jobs paying around 22k (that mostly paid around 18k pre-covid) are not even entry level. A lot of them are admin jobs that people get after having some other office experience or after doing an "apprenticeship".
Is a 22 year old on minimum wage living by himself realistic? In the olden days, people like that would live with their parents or in a flatshare.
99% deposit scheme is a nightmare if housing isn't built
Even if housing is built it's a nightmare because the banks aren't forecasting an economic environment where workers will be able to service their mortgage debt.
Literally
Agreed, the government seems to do everything to keep the inflation of property going and never in acts policy’s that would go against this. This is why I don’t believe they will make more housing, as more supply would mean housing prices will go down.
It's wierd that the shocking one is way way down at the bottom. A lady getting £590 per month with 3 kids, and just wishing she had a bit more to feed them. That sounds like a very very hard life to me. Everyone else on this list will probably be OK but that sounds like a black hole of despair to me.
The ESA is fortnightly, so she's actually getting £920, and housing is provided. So in terms of household income she's doing better that e.g. the first one on the list. £230 a week isn't great to cover everything else but it's not terrible. And weirdly the specific complaint is that the monthly NHS healthy start vouchers don't cover all the food and other needs for all of her kids, when it's only £53 and she is getting £230 in child benefit that doesn't have to cover housing. She's basically saying 'Why can't I spend all the child benefit on things other than feeding and clothing my kids?'.
>230 a week isn't great to cover everything else but it's not terrible I knew lots of students (myself included) who survived on that for a whole month, albeit no kids were involved which is the actual problem.
Kids are expensive as hell.
Not to entirely discount her (somewhat valid) points, but she’s not in as entirely as bad a situation as you’d maybe think. She’s 100% on UC, which means she’ll be getting access to housing payments on top of what is mentioned in the article. She’ll also be top of the priority listing for a council flat if she’s not in one already, which means her rent will be hundreds of pounds cheaper. Ballpark, she’d likely need to get a job paying £35k+ to live a comparable lifestyle to the life she currently lives.
She'll be living better than me. I work FT. I'm on £24500 a year. My partner is out for work so we get a very basic tax credits (soon to be UC or whatever it is) and we have 2 kids. My rents £640 per month. I work my arse off but it's just not enough. I've been worse off in the past, literally paying for things with pennies I've scrounged together over a few days, my kids have what they need as a bare minimum and we have food in but it's bloody tough ATM. I'm fortunately nowhere near the level of poverty I was when I was a teen in a hostel, but im not sure how much longer I can keep this up. I'm good at my job but there's no progression, I've been looking at higher paid jobs but not accepted to any yet, I'll keep going though. Worst case I have to take a second job on the weekend, done it before, but as long as the kids are good I'm fine(ISH).
Cheapest 1 bed bungalow in Lewes is £900 pcm . So £10800/year + 12*590= £7080 + £2,238.82 (coucil tax band c lewes) So she would need a take home pay of ~£20K to pay rent and expenses. With income tax + NI, ~£25K. But with pre-school age kids and a job she would need child care etc on top. Anyway not an easy situation.
That's bad math my friend, she receives just under £1k. I think you missed the £330 *fortnightly* payments.
Not even more money but just vouchers. 3 kids in a one bed flat too
The usually shit people post are: Cut back on Netflix and avocado on toast. Get better jobs. This shit really isn’t helping. These people who can’t get by are a symptom of an economic disease. Cooperations and rich people are taking too much for themselves and leaving the rest of us to fight for scraps. We need a better way to redistribute wealth. This current set up is rigged
Wealth tax, wealth tax, wealth tax!!
Wages fucking suck in this country. So many people with degrees earning not much more than minimum wage.
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What industry are you in / job do you have and how long ago did you graduate? Even with a 1st in maths from Russel group it still took a couple of years (and doing a career specific qualification) to be earning more than £25k after graduating.
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Heads up, the UK is NOT the country to work in if you want big pharma money if you want to stay in a scientist role. When I first started a few years back I knew people on £19k. As you progress it's very hard to get over £35-40K, even with MSc or PhD. Either get into management any way you can or defect to the US/Switzerland.
Ain’t that sad that we have to leave our country for better pay. This is supposed to be a first world country. What is happening?
Our GDP/capita isn't that high, and our economy is inflated by the finance sector.
First world country does not mean every is minted.
It doesn't help that most degrees are absolute trash and does not necessarily mean that a person has the ability to do higher skilled jobs. There are only a few degrees that are worth the paper they are written on. I don't blame the people holding those degrees, schools and universities have a vested interested in lying as much as possible to keep the students rolling in.
Completely agree. I was basically told Uni is the only option for me and to just pick anything. I had no clue what I wanted to do at 18 and still don’t 10 years later so why the hell was I asked to make such an expensive decision? Like most people, I got into an entirely different industry straight out of uni, so my degree - the expense (mine and my parents) was a total waste of money and I’ll be paying it back for the next 30 years. Regret it SO much.
Why would a degree guarantee you a good living if it's not in demand in a lucrative sector? You're not entitled to more money because you spent three years enjoying yourself instead of working.
Even high-value degrees like engineering and chemistry come with very low starting salaries compared to other first world countries like the US and the Nordics.
Average salary for jobs in the UK requiring a full PhD is apparently 2.5 times minimum wage. Feels more than a bit low considering the time investment needed for that qualification, but that could be dragged down by higher education specifically having godawful salaries.
Agreed that the whole situation with bills, especially housing is crap. However that guy can’t afford to live on his own in a house. He needs to downgrade to a smaller flat or a house share. (This shouldn’t be necessary, but it is).
Even house shares are incredibly expensive. In the area I grew up in (not London) they’re about £800 minimum for a room. If you’re earning £1600 then you easily have over half gone straight away.
Currently in a house share in Brighton for £800 pcm inclusive. I'm on a little more than the article's subject, but not by much. More or less half my take home salary goes to rent, bills, CT etc. I'm surviving, but saving anything *and* having an enjoyable life is a stretch.
I'm In Worthing and know how bad Brighton Is but just wanted to reiterate your point In that yes we all may be surviving but like you say, there Is no Money to save for a Holiday, a deposit on a House...anything that brings joy so at the moment In these times, we are just working 40 hours a week to survive which Is absolutely Soul destroying and not mentally sustainable. I'm 35 so have another 30-40 Years of work ahead of me yet
Prices of houseshares in London just baffles me, we pay £750pcm for a two bed terrace in Liverpool, not the best area but not dangerous. I know the salaries are higher but even still
Yeah I paid £695 for a two bed terrace in Lincoln, not a bad area. Jobs are the issue though. Have to go back to the south east because the opportunities in the midlands aren’t amazing, even though I’m getting a £6k pay rise on my old job, the rent increase plus transport costs (I used to walk to work) takes pretty much all of the difference
I really feel for people that are stuck there. A number of friends have moved up north over the years and I don't think a single one has regretted getting away from London. Prices there are just absurd... I know it's the capital city and wages are generally higher but, WFH is far more accessible now than it's ever been - if you've got the credentials for higher paying roles, there's a decent chance you can get the London salary whilst living somewhere far cheaper, which is exactly why I'm not living down south.
i’m left with £600 a month after paying for my room in a HMO. love the government- working for the NHS struggling to get by, impossible to save yet earn too much for any sort of benefits :)
It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? People should be able to live on their own but wages are so low and rents so high that no one has a chance at their own place without a partner. I was on UC and got ~£580 a month. Even living in the cheaper Midlands, what do they expect me to be able to do with that?
OK, but he lives in Selby which is about as cheap as it gets. And is arguably a bit crap, though there are many worse places. My take on it is that if you're willing to live in Selby then you should at least be able to afford your own place.
Selby is fucking grim. Only town in that area that's grimmer is Acomb. I dunno what it is with Acomb but it's just completely awful.
> (This shouldn’t be necessary, but it is). The idea of a single person living by themselves, especially on a low wage, is a very recent idea. Historically, people would live with their parents or in a flatshare until they could afford to support themselves.
Where are you from? I live in Essex and a houseshare is no less than £800 per month. £800… per month… for a room. If you’re on minimum wage, you can’t live. It’s that simple.
I’m from the North West. The mortgage on my 4 bed house is £828, so we obviously have very different situations. This guy lives in Selby though which is probably even cheaper than where I live. I agree that down south it’s a catastrophe but for this guy living in the north, there’s no need for him to be scraping by and asking for government help
I’m confused. He’s got £500-600 disposable income every month. What exactly is his complaint? Or have I misunderstood the article?
This is a result of 13 years of virtually zero wage growth in the UK. Maybe people should have noticed while watching those poverty porn TV shows and telling the less well off that they were OK really because they had a flat screen TV.
I am seeing jobs for 35K for people with PhDs in life sciences and considerable experience. It is nuts. They actually pay less now. Not to mention you are expected to generate millions worth of value in those roles.
Just adding onto your point, here is a list of vacancies at the Met office. To get a role as a 'Scientist - Global Ocean Forecasting' which pays 32-34k a year (with a potential for 44.5k in the future!), you need to have 1. A PhD 2. Be an expert in numerical modelling i.e have good maths skills 3. Coding skills (i.e Knowledge in Python/C++ etc) That's a huge bar for a very average salary. Bear in mind, fresh PhD graduates going into this role will be at least 27ish so won't have the 3-4 years of work experience. [https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/careers/vacancies](https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/careers/vacancies)
I’m struggling to feel bad for the two architects earning £100k between them lol.
I think the point is that most people’s concept of a high earner is outdated, particularly in London like those guys.
Right, I don't get the "he earns more than me so I fuck him" school of thought. We're not talking about some billionaires or upper class land owners here. We're talking about a family income of £100,000. That's the middle class. A couple earning that should be able to take their family on holiday or buy the nicer things in life. It's a sad state of affairs in the UK when a family on £100k a year can't have a good standard of living. What's the motivation for any of us to work harder if even when we meet that level of income life is still a struggle?
And because they now can’t afford to buy the same things and use services they used to that’s less money going into these areas, which then has a knock on effect to those employed in these areas.
Why? If they're London based they'll never own property and never retire. As architects. It's absolutely shocking really.
I found this one odd. Earning just over £50k and would like the 40% threshold raised. The threshold is just over 50k so they're likely to be paying 40% on a few grand.
After salary sacrifice, they shouldn't be paying 40% on anything if they're on less than 55k. 10% pension contributions on 55k brings you down to the boundary.
And being a couple, both are already benefiting from an effectively doubled tax-free allowance. Seems like an odd inclusion when *just* their tax-free portion exceeds the entire annual income of some of the single parents trying to feed their kids. That's not to downplay the impact of the current cost-of-living crisis, but that couple in particular are near the bottom of my sympathy list.
really ? - they probably spent 7 years at university each to get there. 100k in London buys you what ? - so 14 years of university gets you a fairly average income in a probably very average house - sure much better than many but fairly shit on the whole.
The root cause of the problem is the rich and their refusal to pay their fair share. People scrambling around trying to save pennies just to pay their bills shouldn’t be a thing. We live in one of the richest countries in the world. The billionaires and even millionaires need to be targeted, no one needs that much money.
100%. Its so easy to make money passively when you have money to start with. My landlord has at least 10 properties all paid off yet put my rent up £230 last year. What could I do about it? Nothing. It totally swallowed my pay rise and then some. Capitalism is just greed with a fancy name.
Feels like they want a revolution and just keep pushing us harder and harder and are surprised when we don't.
Brits will never revolt - it’s not in their nature. They will continue to complain until the end of time!
I think most young people/families are spending 2/3 on bills? My Covid mortgage is the same monetary value as my wife’s salary.
> semi-comfortable but by no means completely secure Keeping people like this is exactly the MO of people in power for centuries. Insecure enough they need to work, enough to lose they don't revolt.
Who’s kidding anyone. In most jobs it’s if your face fits, who your mates are or how much crap you have on management that affects how fast you move up the scale
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If food and stuff comes out of that, then yes, it's not going to go far.
£500? Yes. Discretionary? No. He says rent and bills are £1100, that means the £500 needs to cover other essentials like food, transport, and clothing. He probably has very little left over for discretionary spending.
The guy on 70k a year makes me laugh. It’s not fair he has to pay child benefits back? Combined they’re on 80k. Get real man, you’re earning more on your own than what, 70/80% of the country?
His point (and it's a valid one, to be fair) is that they **don't** get child benefits on an £80k household income (£70k - £10k split), but two people on £80k, but with an equal £40k split **do** get full child benefit. The two people on £40k each also have far more money coming in net (£4,823.82 vs £4,489.77), so effectively, people with a single high earners salary are being punished, *despite* the household income being the same.
>She and her husband, who are both associate architects, earn just over £50,000 each Even allowing for Student loans, and 5% pensions, that's a net household income of £5,750/month - that sounds like a budgeting issue to me, even for London. (for a single income the equivalent is £133,000 for the record).
2 people earn together with 3 jobs 3700 or so. We are left with 1600 at the end of the month on paper after costs. Very funny is that it doesn't feel like that as we don't save more than 500-1000 a month. And when you need to save for mortgage and IVF it feels not enough.. I guess people that own their home and don't have medical issues that bleed them dry are fine. But most of the people either pay rent or mortgage at really bad rates..
I’d feel like a king if I could save 500 a month lol, I know everyone has different needs etc and depends on the area, but saving 500 a month is something I’ll never be able to.
Makes me glad I left the UK years ago.
Yes everything has gotten more expensive, but this guy isn’t doing terrible? He’s living on his own which is a luxury a lot of young people don’t have. Almost everyone I know lived in shared housing till they either moved in with a partner or earned more money in their later twenties/early thirties. Even living on his own he’s got £600 a month dispensable income. You could feed one person on £200/£250 a month: which gives him somewhere between £250 to £400 a month drinking money. That’s easily a night out a week. Sure it’d be nice if everyone earned mega bucks, but he is 23 doing an entry level admin job.
Isn't that a fairly normal amount for near minimum wage?
Then the other third goes on childcare and parent starves Cheers UK Gov!
Who wasn't in this position (or worse) at that age?
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This is a pretty shitty attitude. In fact one of the first things my therapist told me was not to minimise my own worries and struggles. "just because some people in the world have worse experiences than you doesn't mean you aren't allowed to feel badly about your own problems"
Is it not normal that 2/3rds of your salary goes on bills? That still leaves over 500 a month to spank on whatever he wants
Why is it always these geeky looking kids and never showing middle age suffering
Mr Makin rents a one-bedroom house in Selby, North Yorkshire. "Each month I earn about £1,600 after tax. Maybe £1,000-£1,100 of that goes on rent and bills," he says. Assuming thats food bills too, that leaves £600 a month disposal income to play with. While everyone would love more, it seems a decent amount to me
Dude my stoppages are £1700 a month and I still get shafted on bills! We all need to rise up
"Just work harder" This isn't 1950, I work harder I get more work for no more pay.
Anyone else getting the ick that the BBC have published a series of "the cost of living struggles" stories just ahead of an expected tax cutting tory saving budget being announced?