Get Britain Working is totally missing the current employment crisis economy

I find this really hard to believe. This isn’t painting the full picture, and you’re probably overlooking various factors, as good roles at good companies get snapped up rapidly. Or your recruiters aren’t doing their jobs well - as someone with a background in recruitment.

As far as benchmarking goes, I’ve seen EA roles in London advertised at 30k! Similarly roles requiring 5 years of experience and a masters degree paying less than 30k.

Employers are underpaying because they know candidates are desperate and that the job market is horrendous. Many roles are paying far less than they were even last year. Compensation is poor, and statutory holiday and pension are often the only benefits being offered.

This means that it might not even be financially feasible to work due to childcare, COL, or transportation costs.

Additionally, an insistence on hybrid working (typically 3-4 days or 5 days onsite) means many people can no longer afford the commute on the much lower salaries. It also means that disabled people might not be applying, and you’ll see less parents being able to work those roles due to the lack of flexibility.

And on top of all this, many employers paying a good wage, expect you to be connected to work constantly (email/phone) & to forgo a good work-life balance.

To put it into perspective, 20 years ago I was on 21k in London in a finance role in corporate, I’m still seeing roles paying salaries in the low 20s.

I have excellent experience 20+ years, and haven’t been able to find a job - nearly 1 year of searching. Every application is tailored & ATS scores checked. Not even a temporary role at Christmas in the supermarket. It’s a f joke. Not sure what’s next for me, give up working altogether? Not much left in the savings pot. Aged out, AI’ed out.

At this point, I’m starting to think being hopeful might be delusional.

They don't know. No-one does. Stock up on canned food and water purifier tablets and learn how to skin a rabbit (or cat) is my advice.

This is just politics. Playing politics, picking one party of elites over another, while our entire economy is collapsing around us.

This is not about politics. This is about how people are going to live in a grossly overpopulated country with massively inflated prices and living costs, where meritocracy is dead and all that matters for life is who your grandparents were and what inheritance they gave you. In a country where one sector after another is collapsing like dominoes killed by computers, globalism and greed.

Stop playing bloody politics in bloody London and tell us how we can live in future, never mind fiddling while Rome burns.

It was par for the course for startups in 1999-2000. Also came with a bunch of stock options (which were obviously worthless after the dotcom crash). It was quite bonkers. We pitied our fellow grads who didn't get a job in a startup and had to settle for a quant job at Goldman Sachs or Merril Lynch 😆

This was in The Guardian in 2000.

@PharazonIn 2000 that was a stonking starting salary. More than city law grad jobs by a long way in 2000. So it’s really out of kilter with the norm. For any sector. However grad salaries have been static for 15 years. Especially some engineering roles. Many grad jobs in London are very low too - start on £25,000 pa. Way less than a nurse or teacher who people think are low paid and need food banks! It’s over supply of grads - mostly.

Our starting salaries for new graduates in 2000 (I was one) was £40k. Admittedly we were in over-exuberant startup mode at the height of the dotcom bubble, but 25 years later and our starting salary for new graduates is…£40k.

Certainly don’t begrudge people getting the minimum wage either

@Jems557 Unfortunately lab supervisors are easy to find. Vast numbers of grads in this field as expansion of universities has produced them. It’s supply and demand. Not all stem pays well. It’s choice isn’t it? Make one with better pay outcomes. Plus I don’t begrudge any supermarket worker getting minimum wage. We need food shops!

Yes I cannot understand why the government doesn’t do something about the high marginal tax rates, they are killing the economy and the government is missing out on the 42% tax people would of been happy to pay

@AlertCat It’s up to employers what they pay. Often it’s determined by the value clients place on the service or good provided. Pay too much for employees and the firm is bankrupt.

For state employees, we all pay. We often see bloated workforce with little evaluation of productivity. So it’s not about who works hard, it’s about who actually needs your labour and at what price? Hugely successful companies making large profits tend to pay more for highly qualified staff. Plus some people work much much harder than others and do jobs others cannot do.

We are producing grads no one needs. Their degrees aren’t relevant to the work available. So of course they don’t get grad carers.

I have felt for some time that we need to reassess how jobs are paid and how they’re valued. Along with that, I feel there is a need to be more honest about the real cost of things.

As pp have mentioned, employers want to pay peanuts to well-qualified and highly-skilled staff whose jobs carry real responsibilities- by peanuts I mean any amount that is both inadequate to finance a reasonable lifestyle, and also so close to the minimum wage as to make the additional responsibility or the salaries overtime (as in jobs like medicine, nursing, teaching, other roles where you work to complete the job and not the hours) feel exceptionally onerous.
The businesses themselves may not be able to afford to pay more, though. While it used to be the case that if you couldn’t afford your staff, your business wasn’t viable, I’m less sure now that that’s the whole story. I’m also a sole trader and I know my product is in demand, but the costs of providing it keep rising and there is only so much of that that my clients can afford to absorb. So you get a spiral of reduction, where goods and services become more expensive or more scarce, and then most people can’t access them, so they lose a bit of their quality of life. And then we all end up sadder, crosser, less healthy, less spiritually nourished (we all need access to activities and things we love to do) and round we go, increasingly reliant as a country on welfare, and it’s a vicious circle.

I can understand that in a job where the wages are very hierarchical like that, but in our business she was an office admin assistant. We were made to increase the wage to 12.21 but this didn’t mean that she was suddenly worth more - her duties and abilities remained the same.

If the govt decided to increase the MW to £20 an hour, it doesn’t mean that those roles are worth that, the MW is a figure plucked out of the air - it doesn’t necessarily reflect specific roles.

It’s hard to explain, but as a business owner, if the govt arbitrarily decides to increase the pay of your staff, it doesn’t mean that the roles are necessarily worth that figure. Some would be (I would say care roles are worth much more than the fairly cushy admin jobs we have!) but some would not. And just because the govt has decided to increase wages, doesn’t mean that the company itself is more productive.

We give pay rises for increases in productivity (eg we pay our sales people very good bonuses based on increased sales) but she wasn’t doing anything more to earn this pay increase, so why should we have paid her over and above what the govt decided?

And most kids don't have parents bankrolling them. My son is deputy manager of a garden centre and has to live in a hmo (sneaking his girlfriend in and out past the cctv) because he can't afford to rent a 1 bedroom flat.

He pays £675 per month for a room and isn't even supposed to have his girlfriend stay over.

This with bells on. I’ve just read Patrick Grants book Less and he has a lot to say I totally agree with about jobs and education.

She's not wrong.

I was on 5% above the minimum wage, and then it increased to £12.21, so yes, I got a pay increase but I lost the 5%.
The reason I lost the 5% was because anyone on minimum wage (veterinary assistants, receptionists, admin staff and finance staff) earns 70p less per hour than the registered veterinary nurses, and the nurses weren't happy about it.

Ah, I have come across this. Such employers think the role being part-time is a "perk" which makes up for the wage, because they're harder to find.

It seems that some employers have gone insane when it comes to the wages they offer versus their expectations of what candidates can bring.

I usually work in comms/marketing/website management and today I saw a company looking for a part-time web manager in the South East and offered £14 per hour....

For that they wanted someone with detailed programming skills, website database management and systems security experience with a strong IT background. The minimum wage is £12.21 and they think it is appropriate to advertise for a web and IT professional and pay £14 per hour.

Absolutely ridiculous.

It is though, as retail is notorious for poor pay and conditions as part of the work. Employers who don’t do that stand out, like John Lewis (I have heard).

Retail staff also take abuse from the public on the daily; they’re held liable for thefts, they’re threatened. It’s got the potential to be a horribly stressful work experience with very little financial reward.

Anyway, let’s not play ‘My job’s more stressful than yours’ because it’s not very helpful to the discussion!

How is money not related to work in any sector?!

You're describing a money issue, that's not related working in retail.

A junior doctor starting salary was £22,000 in 2000. It’s forgetful all media grads were starting on £25,000. However nearly every grad profession has seen static starting salaries. Except doctors . Look at engineering and msny jobs not in the private sector.l where profit snd output matter, Many salaries have been static. However that makes choice of degree and career vital doesn’t it?

@FrothyCothy We are unitary here and it was absolutely necessary. No diminution of services that we noticed. Many aspects aren’t aligned yet, eg planning policies, but we no longer are spending £1 million on several chief executives. LAs need streamlining.

Yep exactly the same in the LA I work for. I still expect it all to go ahead though, with lots of redundancies for the average staff member. Our SLT are adamant we're all safe, which is utter bs.

In the meantime, staff and teams are in limbo, projects and vacant positions are being delayed 'to be reviewed as part of LGR' which is causing massive problems. In the last few months I've seen good staff get fed up and leave, and morale (which was already poor) is crashing below floor level. It's pretty grim.