NMW to increase again next year to £12.21 ph.

I was referring to the post above when a social worker job was advertised at 14 per hour

How much more do people with no qualifications expect to be given per hour?

Because if nmw is 12.21 then being a social worker at 14 per hour with a student debt and all those years of working suddenly doesn't seem very attractive. May as well work in a shop if there are any left.

Exactly this. Less and less people will be going to uni anyway. The loans are set to rise and families can’t support adults not living with them on top of running their own households. More and more are just not going to be able to go to university and get degrees.

How are you “hounded” be UC?

You get your payment promptly and if you do a bare minimum all they want from you is to pick up the phone occasionally and to accept some basic commitments?

Seems fair to me.

It will be interesting to see if the "Real living wage" changes.

I know that the real living wage outside London was £12 an hour and some companies prided themselves on being a real living wage employer.

But then they pulled out because they couldn't afford the new real living wage

Craft beer giant Brewdog abandons real living wage for employees - BBC News

This is what an average social worker gets paid

Experience is often worth far more than degrees- try getting a job in IT without experience. Non degree qualifications are just as worthwhile in some sectors and many workers on NMW will have degrees and qualifications anyway. I want my nursery workers and carers well qualified with qualifications that help their work not pointless degrees.Their jobs are hugely important and should be valued far more anyway.

It will mean people working 40 hrs a week will get 23k do you really begrudge that, do you think people in nmw jobs are stupid or don't work hard. How much do you earn a year? Not everyone is in a situation where they where or are able to go to uni. Check your privelage

Sorry, but no way is a Social Worker with a degree on MW!

Why shouldn’t someone who works in Tescos (for example) need a decent wage? Pretty sure that despite looking down your nose at all these workers your life would be pretty screwed if they weren’t there doing those things?

On one hand it’s good and on another hand it causes so many issues.

will more small businesses go under as they can’t afford to pay? Will companies lay off some workers? One restaurant owner last night was saying he’d have to lay off some waiting staff. So some lose their jobs, the remaining ones are overworked, customers get a slower service. Or prices rise to pay the new wages.

and it all fuels inflation so their wages may go up but prices also go up.

but the people just above nmw who don’t get a pay rise also have to cope with increased prices making them worse off than currently .

dd works as a junior architect and is currently on £140 a year above nmw, with a first class architecture degree. Her boss is raging at having to pay her more, we are hoping she won’t be sacked. If she does get a pay rise it will only be up to nmw. All the education, etc seems rather pointless though I accept she should progress.

but working in the nhs still it affects filling roles like healthcare support workers who are now on the same as nmw (they used to be on more). According to the staff fb group lots are leaving as they think why have all the responsibility, etc of taking blood, cannulating, doing obs, working shifts if they can do shop work for the same money 🤷‍♀️.

It's combined with a NI increase.

I expect to live like a person who works full time. I expect a system whereby I do not need a top up to a full time wage to be able to live.
I have qualifications btw, I am not stupid.
I am not quite sure how you deem the taxpayer to be topping me up? I presume you feel alongside not getting an increase in wage as I am not worthy enough, I shouldn’t get UC either? Is that the point you are making? That I shouldn’t think myself lucky that I get topped up to the minimum deemed necessary to live on?

Factor in NI contributions as well.

It's 6.7% when inflation is 2%

So should other workers on wages slightly above the NMW in a company get 6.7% as well?

This was one of the reasons why I left my other job. I was in a managerial position in a charity. But the charity had little money. But other the time I was there, the NMW increased by nearly 40% - and as we had a lot of people on NMW, it left little money for other people to get a pay rise.

Eventually there was about a 15% difference between my pay and the people on NMW.

Which is probably what the OP is about. NMW has increased a lot in percentage terms but what about people above that.

Anyway I left and am on a better salary. I do know that the charity will find it hard to fund this - just as they found it hard to fund previous increases. When you employ a lot of NMW workers, 6.7% is a big part of the wage bill.

For context, NMW went up 10% last year. (£10.42 to £11.44) and by 6.7% the year before

National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates - GOV.UK

Because you haven't put that time and effort into getting professional qualifications.

Why should you be paid as much as a social worker with a degree and qualifications, or an assistant dentist?

Nor is it for the person deemed not to have the qualifications to be working yet unable to feed their children.
Not everyone has a degree, not everyone is vastly intelligent, but it doesn’t matter.
Work needs to pay, otherwise where is the point.
A great many NMW earners are single mums (myself included) who are let down by the CMS system, who are hounded by UC and who often have no choice but to take the less desirable jobs out there.
Why are we worth less?

It's going up less then last year so I really wouldn't worry

I work in retail, I am worried that my colleagues will have their hours reduced to make up the extra spend in wages. This has happened every time. Nobody is better off than before the rise 😓

You get UC, what more do you want? If you want even more per hour then work yo gain qualifications and apply for another job. You surely can't expect the tax payer to subsidise you to the point you can live as comfortably as someone with a highly qualified profession?

I saw a social workers job today for 14.5 pounds an hour, an associate dentist for 16 pounds per hour. Who is going to bother!

No, some of them are living on a knife edge and will close and their staff will lose their jobs. Not that that matters to you as it doesn't affect you at all.

Not all businesses are raking in profits year after year. Some have tough times.

It's unbelievable how people who have kids at nursery are expecting the government to protect them and noone else. Hypocrites.

Those on UC really can’t win. We do the jobs that none of you want to do, most of us were deemed “essential” during a bloody pandemic and you all stood clapping for us.
It’s not unreasonable to want a decent wage for doing that work.
We are topped up because you cannot live on NMW, but yeah, we are all totally in it for the freebie handouts. I love the fact that I can’t get off UC unless I can somehow almost double my income.
In case you hadn’t noticed most of us are also working full time.

It’s not the country that pays.

it’s the employers.

And I'm sure they'll be delighted to be on the same wage as someone with no qualifications at all.

Small businesses that can't afford decent wages are not healthy thriving businesses. Any business dependent on cheap labour is not adding value to the economy.

I sympathise with sectors where government funding is a big part of their income (care, childcare/education), the government will need to raise funding to ensure they can continue.

Let's see shall we.