How can the majority of people in a country be fully employed if ?

No, I’m not the one mixing up the two. It was other posters thinking you can directly compare employer contributions in private to public. You can’t.

Yes can compare the outcome, but not the input as the second is not dependent on the first.

According to the ONS, what the majority of civil service (65%) end up with is inferior not superior when total renumeration is compared for the same occupation between public and private sectors.

The economy isn't a fixed size. The economy grows because oeople come up with new ideas for things to make or services to provide, or they come up with better ways to provide existing goods and services. As the economy grows more jobs are created.

There is no hard limit on the total amount of profit and the total amount of jobs that the economy can provide.

🙄 you’re mixing up how it’s funded with what you get back out, you can still compare because what you end up with is far superior.

Exactly, the employer contribution % between public and private employers cannot be directly compared because the public employer contribution % isn’t linked to or saved towards the pension you will get but the private employer contribution % is.

Yes it is true NOW and has been since 2017.
Your ONS report is from 2014 based on 2013 data and is an decade out of date. It even says in the link “this is not the latest release”

Read the latest release from 2019- it has gotten worse since then.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/articles/publicandprivatesectorearnings/2019

See first table, 65% of public sector employees are upper or upper middle skill level occupations.

See second table, public sector employees in the upper or upper middle skill level occupations earn between 2.5% to 15% less than their private sector counterparts even after accounting for the renumeration of their defined benefit pension.

A large part of this is because public sector pensions were heavily cut in 2015, meaning the total package of salary, pension and other forms of renumeration is for most (65%) public sector employees now less than what they can get in the private sector.

Ah, so you are making a generalisation based on only the low end of public sector employees. Fortunately the full job to job comparison of like with like between public and private has shown repeatedly that on average, as in -in the majority of cases, public sector employees are paid less than private sector employees.

Your employer contribution in the public sector isn’t to your pension. Public sector occupational pensions are unfunded. The contribution goes to paying the current retirees who were on vastly more generous pensions. Your statement saying how much your public pension is worth is based on your pensionable earnings and years of service, it isn’t linked to the employer contributions.

Here is easy read on the fact that the contributions you pay and your employer pay do not go into a pension pot of savings to later pay your pension.
https://www.unbiased.co.uk/discover/pensions-retirement/starting-a-pension/public-sector-pensions

The number of companies and the number of employees in companies are not finite, they increase to match the potential for profit and the availability of suitable labour, management, etc.

There is plenty that needs doing, we don't have people to harvest hand picked crops, road verges are covered with rubbish, many woodlands don't get managed any more, roads full of pot holes, houses in disrepair, infrastructure like school and hospital maintenance not keeping up, more housing stock needed. not enough care workers and nursery workers or nurses and doctors or brick layers, carpenters and plasterers. There could be plenty of jobs to go around. The government should pick up the slack paying for a some of this, it would mean raising more tax, but more people in work means more tax money.

Unfunded pensions just mean there isn’t a ringfenced pot of money like a private sector pension has to have, it’s just an entirely different setup. The contribution to the pension is still in effect towards your future pension, which will come out of public funds at the time. You can’t really compare the two. This was something that came up in a general election a while back when one party tried to claim the other had spent money from the pot that didn’t actually exist.

I think it would be a very good thing if families could have a good life without requiring two full-time incomes. And if those who are ill or disabled aren’t being pressured in to work. Full employment isn’t a great target, imo.

This is simply not true

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/articles/publicandprivatesectorearnings/2014-03-10

No it's not, I'm talking about low end public sector like bin men, dinner ladies, etc. These get better pay than private sector equivalents. At the top end the public sector pay is worse.

My employer contribution is to my own pension. I get a statement each year telling me how much it's worth.

Alpha - £56,001 - £150,000 so employee contribution of 7.34% and employer of 28.97% to get a CPI-linked pension of 2.32% pensionable earnings at NPA for each year worked.

Have not included additional pay and bonuses because that’s not about the pension, that’s about the private / public sector choice in general. (And it’s not always the case that private sector gets additional pay and bonuses anyway…)

My point is someone on, say, £60k in the public sector will get a better pension than someone on £60k in the private sector

Companies often could pay better wages but the law in the UK says they have to prioritise shareholder dividends above anything else. Plus the bosses are often on huge pay while low paid employees claim benefits.

This could be changed if the political will was there to legislate for fairer division of profits.

Your idea of giving everyone full employment regardless of need sounds more like a communist system.

In a capitalist society people need money so they find something to do to earn that money. Other people have money so will pay for that service or item. So for example a hairdresser can meet demand for haircuts and the price will settle at somewhere that takes into account how much it costs to run the service, how much competition there is, how much people are willing to pay. If the job doesn't pay the hairdresser finds other work of some kind.

Most people who are unemployed in the UK are not in that position because of a lack of available work, it's because either they live in the wrong area, don't have the right training or have other issues making things difficult for them. Maybe they are disabled or have young children and are restricted by times they can work. Maybe they are stuck in a benefits trap. Maybe public transport isn't adequate to get them to work.

That is because public sector workers are more likely to have degrees and/or professional qualifications. The contribution by employer isn’t towards your future pension but towards current pensioners because public sector pensions are unfunded.

Yes, there is shit pay for nonprofessional entry level jobs across the board.

After you adjust average pay for qualification, job level, age, experience and sex a public sector worker earns less than a private sector worker in the same job.

Ok which pay band & Contribution rate are you using as a comparator?

And have you offset the difference of a private sector employee banking their extra pay & bonuses into a private pension?

We'll have to agree to differ then. My DH and DD both work in hospitality. Hours and pay rates that I doubt would be tolerated in the public sector. Same with pensions.

I work in the voluntary sector. Lots of shite pay and pensions there too.

I'm in the public sector since 2017. My employer contributes 18% to my pension.
The private sector standard is 3%.

Pay is higher in the private sector at the higher end but lower at the bottom. Minimum wage with no extras is standard in many private sector jobs.

Public sector workers are more likely to be on the "living wage" and get more holiday, better sick pay and maternity pay.

OK, show me the private sector pension that gives more than that

We will have to agree to disagree on that.

Ok.

To start with I was a bit confused by your question, but I think I know what you are asking.

Correct me if I am wrong, but you are saying that in an economy, there are only so many things to make or do that are profitable. So how are so many people employed?

I think this is kind of a variation of the allocation question. So imagine you are God and you decide who works where. But you want people to work in things that are profitable, that make money.

So imagine you allocate people to jobs. You a hairdresser, you a farmer, you a tailor. Then you set the economy going.

The hairdresser works out a price list. Her prices are really high and no-one wants to get their hair cut. She has a few options - drop her prices, do some marketing to persuade people to buy them, worst case change job.

She has quite low costs for each haircut, if she is a mobile hairdresser then her main costs are her time. So the price she can charge directly relates to how much per hour she is paid.

So her business might or might not be profitable depending on how much she chooses to pay herself out of it. If she pays herself all the money the business brings in then it's not profitable at all - but she might be earning lots.

If she can't charge enough for a haircut it to cover her costs

From an economic perspective Full Employment is a bad thing .. you never want it

I was in the public sector from 2016. The pension I had is the same available to new starters today (Civil Service Alpha). It’s still much better than any private sector equivalent.

When did you start work though? This doesn’t apply to workers who started public sector jobs in the past ten years.

Your public sector pension is likely long grandfathered and not available to newer workers.

Erm, yes they have and still are. I’m lucky and I have a matched up to 8% in the private sector, which is the best I’ve ever had, anybody I know working in the public sector has far better than that.