To think minimum wage is dire. What hourly rate would you work for?

I don’t think anyone thinks that care work is entry level, and even if it were it’s still a job that drains you physically, mentally and emotionally and should be rewarded.
I'm assuming you also need to keep up to date with training too.

The point being made before was that NMW should be reserved for entry level jobs and fewer of them.
But what we have now is that a larger portion than usual and expected are AT NMW and the gap between NMW and median wage in the UK has shrunk significantly.

The reality is that a few very short years ago £25,000 was deemed as a rather good salary in my industry. Now it’s literally the NMW!

This!!

Why should people working full time jobs need to be topped up by university credit?
This shows how low wages are. Many cant raise a family comfortably even if both parents are working full time.
Average salaries need to be higher.

Really? I was born in 1957 and into a poor household. My parents ploughed every penny into "housing, heat and food" so yes, we had the basics. Most of the children I grew up with did not - for whatever reason (and that is quite often still the case). You can argue about parents choices, class expectations etc but in the end most of the children that I went to school with did not have those things. My parents didn't have those things either. Their grandparents didn't. The "boomer" golden age did not exist for many people, and was a flash in the pan historically for the working class.

I don't disagree with the principle of what you are saying, and I agree that the gap between rich and poor is widening, but this isn't a "return to the Victorian times" - they never really went away.

That said, that still doesn't change the fact that raising the NMW or lifting the bottom 5% "out of poverty" actually changes nothing - which was my point. To achieve real change you need to do a lot more than play with statistics. A significant factor at play is that also what poverty means changes over time. Now it also includes things like having a television or having a holiday (material deprivation) or how effectively the resources available to a household meet their needs (social metrics deprivation). What was "basic" when I was born is not what is considered "basic" now.

Minimum wage is fine, if it were any higher cost of living would rise yet further. I'm underpaid for my current job since the rise, so I'm looking to move somewhere that will pay me what I'm worth.

I have never been on minimum wage, but I've been in jobs which today would be minimum wage, and I've earned less than today's minimum wage in real terms.

I think it looks like minimum wage is too low, but that's not the real problem - rather, the problem is:

1. Housing costs. If housing was made a lot more affordable (which'd require building a lot more homes), then wages would go a lot further. Conversely, if minimum wage was to go up significantly tomorrow were increased, then housing costs would go up to eat up all or most of that increase.
2. The proportion of jobs which only pay minimum wage, or barely more, is too high.

As for what I'd work for, if I was choosing to leave my current job I wouldn't take a pay cut. If I was out of work, things'd be different: a couple of years ago it looked fairly likely that I'd be made redundant, and I remember discussing with friends/colleagues - all of us said that if that was to happen then we'd happily take a minimum wage job as a stop-gap so we didn't burn through our redundancy money too quickly while hunting for a job that'd be better for the long-term.

there will always be a bottom 5%
But the bottom 5% used to have the basics - secure housing, heat, food and the prospect of studying/training into roles that would give them a better lifestyle. That's gone as the gulf between the richest and poorest in society has become more extreme thanks to govnt policy. We now have more billionaires, more working people in poverty and more than one in four children in the UK growing up in poverty (CPAG). It's a return to Victorian times.

It is low, yes. But what people forget is that in one sense it doesn't matter what it is - it will always be "low". If you double it (a) it will still be the lowest wage and (b) prices and costs will rise in line or even faster. So it will never go further than it does now - the minimum wage is a smoke screen. I'm not advocating abolishing it, btw, because I do not want to licence a race to the bottom by employers who already seem to find enough ways to avoid paying it. I am simply saying that raising it has little or no impact on those earning it.

I recall a similar discussion that I had with a senior politician about "levelling up", who said that they wanted to raise the bottom 5% of households out of poverty. They really struggled with understanding why I was saying that would be impossible because there will always be a bottom 5%. They may not always be the same households, but there will always be a bottom 5% - it's the nature of mathematics, not policy! The same is true of the NMW - there will always be people on it no matter what the amount it pays is, and they will never be "better off" because the cost of everything else will rise in relation to it.

Minimum wage used to be enough to house yourself, pay bills, and have enough for fun after.
Everyone who works full time should expect that but successive governments - Tory and (New) Labour - have devalued work and prioritised protecting unearned income/profit, house price increases, inheritances etc. Work isn't a route out of poverty anymore - and running the country as a giant Ponzi scheme isn't sustainable.

I’m currently on £46k PA but, after taking voluntary redundancy last year, had to work a minimum wage job for 3 months. That was certainly an eye opener! £355 to slave all week, I didn’t even earn enough to pay back my student loan FGS. I’d say bare minimum would be £40k per year.

In my industry, I wouldn’t work for less than £5/600 a day for work within the UK, or higher depending on location/risk.

It’s hard to get a decent understanding of what people would work for, when their jobs and skill sets are so varied.

People on mumsnet (and in the real world too) have very little sympathy for people on minimum wage. The general view seems to be "it's fine to pay poor people poor wages because if they don't want to have poor wages they should just stop being poor". Not everyone can retrain. Retraining costs time and money that poor people don't have. Because they're poor. So they are therefore obviously choosing to continue being poor so therefore not deserving of sympathy. Meanwhile mumsnetters do have sympathy for those on £35-50k because things are very expensive and you just can't get by on that much these days.

So much of the problem is down to property inflation. But when I was younger absolutely nobody rented a flat on their own.

I think minimum wage has increased dramatically. But the problem is that there are some jobs paying it that should not be in that band. Then there is the problem of wage stagnation afterwards.

I think you will find that any country has problems with minimum wage, housing and cost of living.

This

Far too many jobs pay minimum wage now. There seems to be no progression in terms of pay or jobs. Employers expect people to suck it up.

Oh I know. Single people get no help.

Because, I'm part time, and overtime has now been banned (always used to make up extra hours; most in my company are pt)

Well, I'm on it, and struggling

£11.44 per hour, £397.19 on a 40 hour working week. That is not contributing to a pension. That is take home pay of £1.721.16 a month. After rent, say £750 a month, council tax of say £150, Gas & Electric £200, Water £35, car ins & Tax £50, broadband £25, mobile phone £20, (I think that the basics) leaves you with around £491. Then food, petrol, clothing, doesn't really leave a lot does it

Yes this.

my job is paid min wage. There’s a few colleagues who have to have extra training for medical devices that keep people alive and you have to monitor and operate them. The refresher training is regular and paid.

They get paid the same as me without the training. I refused to do the training because it doesn’t garner a higher hourly rate for the responsibility my boss hadn’t thought about that aspect when I told her why I wouldn’t do it.

extra stress, extra training with no benefit.

im actually a designer by trade and so many of those jobs that require a degree and yrs of work experience plus talent are 23/24k a year. That’s barely above min wage.

ive seen a design job recently that required a degree in design 4yrs min experience including ability to use 3D modelling software, know web design, good photography skills inc lighting (which is a separate skill set) as well as illustration skills for 24k. I have those skills but the amount of extra training I put myself through and the costs don’t reflect the pay. Plus it was in the middle of nowhere (joys of the south west!) so the commuting costs would be high and no WFH benefits.

job today required 4yrs min commercial driving experience and only offered min wage. I can get more in a local supermarket.

if you want skilled people you have to pay for them.

The cost of housing fucked it up long before the col crisis to be fair.

When I was an apprentice in a nursery I was £2.60 an hour and I was constantly left to run the room myself or with a newer apprentice. I then became an NHS phlebotomist and was paid £9 and hour 🤣

I'm on £12.20 an hour, public sector, exhausting job which requires a lot of knowledge and people skills. I can afford to do it as I have low outgoings. Some sectors rely on people who have built a skill set through years of hard work then decide to put it to the public good. There's no way they could afford to pay us what the job deserves. There are a lot of highly skilled people on low wages.

I charge £55 per hour, however I’m freelance so no sick pay, pension, NI.
im self taught marketing, PR, advertising and now basic HR too.