Why do you think mumsnet has a more wealthy user base than average or do you think it’s full of bullshitters?

My CEO earns over £2,000,000 + bonus.

In an ideal world, unfortunately practicalities get in the way.
Many people (usually women) have to juggle childcare around work. This limits many women from moving upwards because they have to dedicate a lot of time into being there for their kids.
Not everyone can afford childcare or has family or friends who can help out, especially during the long school holidays.

Who does she think would be available to be drivers and carers and shop assistants?

Younger, less experienced workers. Id expect these roles to have a higher proportion of 18-30 year olds. I'd expect more over 30s to have progressed to supervisory or managing roles, team leaders etc.

I would assume most people have the capacity to be in a role requiring experience during their peak earning period from 30-50, and that during this stage they would earn above NMW.

They are what many people do for their entire life. Good solid honest work.
I take it you're happy to be wheeled round the hospital by the porter though, and have a cleaner perhaps, and use supermarkets and the staff therein?

But it implies that after 10 years doing that you've not gained any skills and experience that justify you being more valuable?

To me the whole point is that with time you should know a job inside out & thus progress to where you employer can put you to better use coordinating a whole team of people doing that job, or training others, or supervising etc. Or you'd simply be faster. That experience and skill would then be worth more than the 18 year old who left school last week and has only been doing the job 5 mins.

Its weird to think you'd never progress beyond unskilled/low experience work through your whole life?

Maybe because in social company it's a bit off putting to others to listen to people talk about what they have and how much they earn, especially if they have a lot more than the people they are talking to.
On a forum, it doesn't really matter if the other posters think they are a crashing bore or a fantasist.

This is also for @Ooihuko

We finally have some hard data:

For the taxes paid in 2025, there was a jump of 12%, to 284,000, in the number of women paying additional rate taxes. The threshold is earnings of £125,000. This represents about 1.7% of the female workforce.

Also, the 2021 census reported only 8% of households with gross earnings of £100K or more. Of course that takes men into account. I am sure this figure has improved since the pandemic but, as MumsNetters frequently moan, growth (under both main political parties) has not been good.

Neither of these figures quite tells us how many women earn at least £100K pa, but they come close. With just under 1.7% of women on £125K+, do we really think that 3.3% of women have salaries clustered between £100K and £124,999? It fails the smell test.

MumsNet has about 8M unique users per month. The true 5% figure would be around 400,000 on £100,000 or more, personally.

Each of us can assess the likelihood of that for herself using whatever signifiers she prefers. Really, why should it matter? It is a pretty feeble way to measure your worth.

But it is. The constant benchmarking by the middle is very tiring. You never see that on forums where people are much wealthier.

That was me

For mums who planned to ttc, it might be a lot higher than 5%. Median earners are less likely to have children. Younger mums might be more likely to interact on forums like tiktok. Older mums who post long posts on a forum are more likely to be higher earning. Just look at the number of posters here who have their first kid in their 40s.

I find that many Facebook debates are all "lol hun - hugs" etc, so I prefer to hang out here!

Clever has nothing to do with class. I have to explain a quite complex thing to all types of people and often the older working class women are far sharper on the uptake than upper middle class men.

I definitely agree that the demograph of MN is the more educated, middle class type. I say that as I originally started off in netmums, the difference being quite stark!
There is definitely artistic license with some posters though and they have been caught out.

You've obviously taken in ironing?

I’d think there’s a broad spectrum, more in the middle range, fewer at both ends.

Though why people feel the need to brag on here about what they or their dh earns, I really don’t know. It’s so frightfully vulgar, dahling.

I think a lot of it is cultural, by which I mean a view that 'other people' are a problem which I think got worse over the covid times. Also there is a current narrative about risk, worry, fear. I dont know how much that is real in real life but on here its quite prominent.

Based on written English, I think your average Mumsnetter is quite smart. Whether you answer the door or not is down to your personality I would have thought, not intellect?

Im not sure certificates make any difference, is it this thread (cant be bothered to scroll back) where one poster is incredulous that people live on 30k type jobs, or less as a long term level and asks 'what happened at school'

Doesnt have the intelligence or imagination to understand the workforce and how jobs are created and distributed, how achievement and intelligence levels average out, how earnings average out across the population, what would happen if no one did these jobs - the whole country went to university and did white collar/graduate jobs and became high earners. Who does she think would be available to be drivers and carers and shop assistants?

And doesnt understand that there are many who may have functional barriers to either achievement or learning and working.

Equally, like another poster said, she works a basic NMW job which means she gets time with her family and little stress from work and that is wholly suitable for her life. Im absolutely in support of that.

When I read people being confused or surprised by that, I realise that despite being big earners, they're not very clever.

@Ooihuko There isn’t much readily available information on the £100K threshold per se.

There is a statistic reported from 2018 when about 625,000 men vs 155,000 women had achieved this salary.

The overall gender gap has barely budged, so it would be a happy surprise if we have come anywhere near parity on this.

I believe the statistics are in absolute terms.

Is that pro-rata or in absolute term ? All hospital consultants now majoritively women earn over 100K pro rata, also most GPs, lots of laywers. If that is your earning potential you are likely to have married someone of similar earning potential especially if you are able to work pt.

Of course. About 46% of small business leaders are women, representing about 10% of the female workforce according to the report.

Does that include business owners? Lots of us gen x women have set up on our own using our skills from our previous careers and are making £100k plus and working flexibly. Definitely the way forward.

Sadly it is a bit more subtle, according to a Houses of Parliament report from last month.

Your top layer figures are correct. However 37% of women vs just 14% of men in employment work part time. Even though part time female workers earn slightly more than part time male workers, while full time male workers earn more than full time female workers, overall part time workers earn much less than full time workers. So much so that the overall gender gap of 12.9% is much bigger than the gender gap for full time workers.

The pool of full time workers available for jobs paying £100K (for only a very few part time jobs do) consists of 86% of the men in employment but only 63% of the women in employment. It would be very surprising if the 5% of workers making £100K came equally from the two groups. That’s before taking the gender pay gap and the motherhood tax into account.

The section on Earnings in the Report did bot discuss high earnings specifically.