To think it’s crazy that National Minimum wage is £27k

You are completely missing the point about the decrease in spending due to suppressed wages. If for 4 decades you suppress wages, people will obtain more debt regardless of what they spend it on

people should object to the amount of billionaires spring up on the back of low wages - rather than keep trying to cut back, then cut back and cut back further

Agree. There is a certain entitlement in western countries for sure.

Disagree. If you are getting into debt over things other than essentials, you need to cut back but people don’t seem to like that.

@MyFairLady27 I call absolute bullshit that a couple with children can live on £20k and it cover everything comfortably. I was earning £23k as a single 22 year old in 2000 and while I had enough to cover my expenses, go out and have a modest holiday, I was hardly flush and there wasn't much left at the end of the month, if anything. Yes I lived in London but in a flatshare in a grotty area that cost me £320 pm

Of course you can have some treats but people want ALL the treats 😆. Greed and keeping up with the Joneses. Car on finance, eyelashes, nails, latest phone, take aways. Lets play I’m poor i promise bingo ?

Although a substantial portion of pensioners do own their house outright, 18% of pensioners are in rental properties, so certainly have housing costs. Additionally not all mortgages are paid off by retirement. Pensioners do have all the other costs associated with housing though: council tax, heating bills and maintainence. A large number of the poorly maintained properties that come on the market were owned by an older person.One reason for this is that paying maintenance e.g roof repairs, gutters, painting, window repairs etc etc is unaffordable if living on a modest pension.The average income for a single pensioner is £333 a week, so many will have much less than that.Just as there are rich and poor people of working age, there are rich and poor pensioners.

I see the ‘ooh it’s just that people’s expectations are higher now’ crowd are out. ‘Ooh back in the 70s we were happy with a sandwich on a park bench in the rain, kicking away the roaming packs of dogs after our sausages. People’s expectations are just too high now. Ooooh’

Honestly, just go away! It’s not unreasonable for a family with two full time working adults to want to be able to take the kids for cake at a cafe on the weekend. It’s not unreasonable to want to be able to but the kids a lunch of soup or a sandwich at a cafe on a day out instead of carrying around a heavy bag of a days worth of food or drink. It’s good that people have these expectations. Also, kids don’t go out and play in groups on the streets anymore. It is more expensive to take them out now ( in money and time). Things change. Just like no one in the 70s had the cosy of a mobile phone contract.

Also, it’s not just expectations. Housing just is much more expensive. my first property in the late 90s was 47k. I bought as prices were starting to really rise in the late 90s and it felt stupidly expensive for a small property. I sold a few years later for 110k. Fuck knows what it would cost now.

And it’s good that people expect some reward of treats for working full time time, like coffee and cake in a cafe. It’s not a sign of a good economy if families work full time for subsistence only.

Just like its good thise bloody free roaming dogs are gone ( history note for young people People used to shove their dogs out the house to wander the streets all day.)

Define tight. If you have a holiday each year and are able to buy food you enjoy eating, that isn’t ‘tight’

It’s all about perspective. If 120k isn’t working for you then I’d suggest what you’re prioritising your spending on may need to change.

Spot on. Everyone I know who claims poverty enjoys take aways and holidays. Actual poverty is a very different thing.

We all confuse want with need these days.

Yes, thatcher decreased the power of the uniions but also demonised them. By doing so many turned their backs on them and by doing so have decreased there wages.

teachers have bucked the trend and it’s made a big difference

It’s irrelevant if your spending power keeps decreasing

Inflation has been a lot higher than this, in fairly recent years.

A quick google will tell you that about 16 to 18 percent of pensioners live in poverty with single pensioners being the hardest hit.
Yes a lot of pensioners do go on a few holidays a year but these tend to be the younger ones who are still in reasonable health.

This exactly,

Very much this. Wages have been surprised in order to turn millionaires into billionaires.

@IzzyGone depends on what the debt has gone on. If it’s essentials, food, petrol, I understand.

This is giving Yorkshiremen sketch. Unless you have no rent/mortgage, barely eat and don’t use electricity - how on earth does a family survive anywhere on 20k??

We earn 120k between us and things can be tight. We don’t get any handouts so everything we need is paid from our pockets. It’s hard not to feel bitter when we see SIL’s DC getting FSM, free breakfast clubs (hasn’t been rolled out at our school), free dentistry and so forth. We get nada.

Minimum wage is crazy as a lot of companies haven't caught up, so you have people on jobs they could walk into aan pick up in 2 minutes on a similar wage as jobs that need a degree and take 6-12 months to master. Property/ rent prices also bonkers, massive disparity between those renting a room in a house for £800 a month and those who live in a 4 bed house with low or fully paid mortgage as they got on property ladder 25 years ago. It's a broken system.

My student loan in 2000 was about £3-3.5k. It paid my rent, food and everything else for the year.

In the year ending December 2025, 813,000 people immigrated to the UK. This figure represents a decrease of 20% from the previous year.

I feel I live in a parallel universe as everyone is cheering as the number of immigrants has gone down but 813,000 people to be housed and cared for is nuts imv. I don't see house prices coming down ever if this continues. In fact they must surely go higher.
Then there's the high energy prices to pay for green energy - again this won't stop until we are covered in enough wind farms to power our homes - that's not coming down either.

If your spending power keeps decreasing, of course debt will become an issue

@CatamaranViperThe debt is the issue here, not the salary. No judgement as I’ve been in debt myself and know how hard it is. Head to moneysavingexpert and see if his website can help you - it did me.

The problem is the housing costs. If they were reasonable, this salary would be manageable. (Though I do still think that people have a funny idea of what essentials are and need ‘x,y,z’).

Poor @intrepidpandabet you wish you hadn't bothered now 😟

Taking the £12,000 of an unskilled factory worker on shifts further, In 1980, strong trade union agreements routinely secured premium night rates of time-and-a-third (+33.3%) or time-and-a-half (+50%). In today's market, standard night shift allowances have compressed significantly, frequently hovering closer to +15% to +25%.

If an unskilled factory worker's salary of
£12,000 in 1980 had strictly kept up with inflation over the last 46 years, that wage would be £66,794.40

Comparison to Modern Night Shift Workers:
An unskilled factory worker working night shifts today typically earns a base rate near the UK National Minimum Wage plus a modest shift allowance. This brings average modern night-shift earnings to roughly £28,000 to £34,000 per year—meaning a worker today performing the exact same role has roughly half the purchasing power of that 1980 position.

in comparison unions have become weak with low membership but in teaching that trend hasn’t occured.

In 1980, the average salary for a school teacher in the UK was £7,350. If teacher wages had strictly kept pace with inflation over the last 46 years, that average wage would be £40,911.57 today.

However, unlike factory wages, modern teachers have actually beaten inflation. The average school teacher salary in the UK has risen to over £52,800

To add further context to the teachers salaries versus the unskilled factory worker with night shift

In 1980, entering the teaching profession was relatively low-paid in real terms (the equivalent of less than £20,000 today). Massive structural adjustments to the [DfE Teacher Pay Scales] have raised the modern minimum starting salary to £34,068 (and up to £41,728 in Inner London) to attract new graduates.

While a night-shift factory has seen de-unionisation, teachers have held on to their union which has helped them stay at a better pace with inflation.