Why do people think some professional jobs like teachers/ midwives aren't paid well?

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I read a lot on here about people moaning about teacher/ nurse/ midwife wages etc. I thought in the NHS you start off on around 25k which I think is a decent wage. I've seen on MN alot of nurses and midwives earning £30/40k upwards.

I genuinely am wondering why people think that's low pay? What would they want as a reasonable salary? Am I not understanding something. This is a genuine question and I am in no way being goady.

I earn very low @17k so perhaps my perception is slightly skewed.

My DD’s best primary school teacher by far had a host of A and A* GCSEs and A-levels, an English degree from a RG university and a primary PCGE. And she was young.

Btw - I believe the problem is more a RETENTION problem than a recruitment one. Ie there are more applicants to places for many nursing and teacher training posts. BUT huge gaps in the job market. I think a lot train but not as many stay OR many are retiring early.

This means that there is a huge wastage in training and is a reflection of how bad working conditions are.

And many more solicitors are working on the high street, where frankly it can take a few years to get to teacher and nurse levels of payment.

It took DH a year after qualification to exceed my teaching pay - we both started at the same time. If I was still teaching as a teacher, his salary now would outstrip mine many many times over. Regional Northern firm.

My sister is also in a regional northern firm, but a smaller firm. She is 10 years our junior. Her salary is no where near DH's but she is still earning around double that of a teacher of the same number of years post qualification, with no management points, etc.

It's clear to me that nurses aren't paid enough, given the recruitment problem. But most lawyers aren't paid a great deal more either

Most lawyers not being paid a great deal more than nurses-I do find that hard to believe.

My understanding is there was (before scrapping the bursary) plenty of applicants for NHS degrees but not enough funding for the number of degree places required to make up the shortfall in the workforce. There's also not enough capacity in the NHS to train students on placement, as many need one on one supervision in the first year.

@Miljah I'm up North, but in mammos. There's a massive shortfall in mammographers and breast radiologists, therefore the band 7's do biopsies and ultrasound, film read and train new mammographers. We do work 12hr shifts on a volunteer basis when there's a risk of 2ww falling behind, but it's not standard, yet.

But I spent most of my working life not working in a professional role and earning much less, so I suppose my expectations are quite low salary wise!

There are regional northern and regional northern firms aragog, not to mention the massive variation by specialisim. It took me 3 years PQE to match my friend's starting salary as a teacher. This was more high street. Had I been at one of the larger and more corporate regional northern firms, the sort of salaries you mention would be realistic. Hill Dickinson, Irwin Mitchell, places like that. But people doing things like family, immigration and crime at regional high street firms in the north, they're just not going to be on double what even NQTs get if they're not in very senior roles (quite possibly not even then). Nor will solicitors working for charities, nor those doing care proceedings for local authorities.

Why do you find it hard to believe holidayshopping?

I should say btw its earlier this decade I was qualifying. I do keep an eye on these things though. And also aragog if your DH is on many many times your teaching salary, that must mean at least by a multiple of 4 or 5 for you to use that description? There are not a lot of firms in the north paying even experienced solicitors 100k plus, so it isn't a very representative example.

The solicitors I know in small high street regional firms seem to get stuck around low to mid 30s a decade or so in. So probably more like teachers than nurses as Band 6 posts apparently now so thin on the ground. My teacher friend I mentioned earns I think 3k more than me pro rata. It would be about 5k more if I worked for the local authority and 7k more than I got last time I worked for a charity.

If you know so much about lawyers and what they are paid, you will also know that they are either solicitors or barristers. We don't have lawyers in the UK....

Huge respect to the nurses and teachers and MW's and paramedics out there. I'll never forget the ones who have touched our lives.

I am always sure to thank and praise [and if I can leave positive feedback or email someone senior to pass on my comments].

Wish there was more I could do.

I also feel this way about our pharmacist, who is just bloody amazing but I'm sure is much more well paid

Well said @crunchy.

The reason it’s not a good wage for the post....
shift work, nights, bank holidays , Xmas day, it doesn’t matter if it’s your shift you work it.
Abuse from patients, or their families.immense pressure from government targets passed down to frontline.
Also because other specialist units like drugs services and mental health services have been scrapped, hospitals and police service take the fall out.lots of political burecacy when you just wanna get a job done.
Same as police officers.
I think if someone is thinking that a nurses pay is good, go spend a Saturday night in a&e, kiss your family goodbye at 2pm in afternoon, whilst they go off to the park in the sun , and spend 11-12 hr shift there.
You will see the frontline staff are worth every penny.
That’s why retention is also low due to mental stress.

It is not the starting salary, it is the progression. Teachers need a good degree plus a PGCE (they are not comparable with midwives).

A good graduate in a STEM subject in London could expect to be snapped up by industry and earn what many consider a lot by mid 30s (80k+++). It is very hard to earn this as a teacher.

A minority of Physics lessons are taught by Physics graduates. They are underpaid relative to their skills and intelligence.

I took a huge pay cut to become a teacher and it’s by far the most challenging job I’ve ever done. It is woefully underpaid considering the level of responsibility and the high expectations (as are a number of public sector jobs).

Traditionally these are jobs for women and, as I was told when I asked why the men doing the same job as me were paid a lot more, "well, they have families to keep, dear". Things change but slowly and some attitudes are institutionalised.

I live (just outside) a major city. It is not London, so no London weighting. There is a desperate shortage of nurses, midwives and teachers because no one in the first 5 years of teaching can afford to live there on their salary (And similar for nurses believe). I have a friend who had to leave the area when she qualified as a teacher because she couldn't afford to rent a room in a professional house share on an NQT salary. She's worked out she'll have to work elsewhere, hit all her targets to get pay progression etc for 5 years before she can afford to live back. She's also in her 30s and would like to be able to live in a 1 bed flat instead of a house share!
Oh, and living outside the city isn't really an option: public transport cuts mean it's impossible to get in from affordable areas (that's why they're affordable!), city schools have no parking and hospital staff have to pay a fortune to park at the hospital.
And we wonder why we have a shortage of teachers/nurses and failing schools... I think the point that you can't recruit vital workers because they can't afford to live is a good sign that they aren't paid enough with the current costs of living.

You know, what's really wrong is the house prices.

If average house price had never gone above three times the average wage, public sector salaries would be much more comfortable.

Teachers will never be paid what Barristers are, but they should be able to buy a house. They could until a generation ago.

Because they are poorly paid when it consider what they do.

I used to earn £250k per year to move rich peoples money around. I assure you that it took much less skill, engagement and involved less stress for me than being a (good) nurse, midwife or teacher would have.

What really sticks out for me is the fact that when I graduated from my Masters in 2005, I went straight into a graduate career earning 24k. Nearly 15 years on this is still the standard graduate salary. I now earn considerably more (despite taking time off for kids), but in comparison to nurses say, I don't deserve that. It frustrates me that people like my sister, who works her arse off in hospitals, doing crazy shifts and is always exhausted, earns less than I do. Yes it's all relative and what you're used to, but it seems endlessly unfair.

Depends on the barrister! I'd rather get paid what a junior teacher does than a junior criminal barrister, and there's no guarantee the junior criminal barrister will outearn the teacher once they get experienced enough either. Average criminal legal aid earnings are actually shrinking apparently. At the other end of the field, commercial barristers start on a lot and progress to a loooooooot.

Interesting article:

www.chambersstudent.co.uk/where-to-start/newsletter/how-much-do-barristers-earn

But yes, I agree completely that the huge problem is the cost of living. House prices have been allowed and even encouraged to stay so high. I live in the north and my teacher friends have all been able to buy houses a few years in, but there are large areas of the country where it's just not going to be enough. My thirtysomething friends in London who are on teaching and legal aid lawyer wages either rent, or they own because their spouse is in something several times more lucrative.

Because they are poorly paid when it consider what they do.

I used to earn £250k per year to move rich peoples money around. I assure you that it took much less skill, engagement and involved less stress for me than being a (good) nurse, midwife or teacher would have.

Since when were people paid according to the intrinsic social value of their work? Or the stress entailed?

Depends on the barrister! I'd rather get paid what a junior teacher does than a junior criminal barrister, and there's no guarantee the junior criminal barrister will outearn the teacher once they get experienced enough either

Yes, you're right. I don't know what possessed me to pick that example!

And we wonder why we have a shortage of teachers/nurses and failing schools... I think the point that you can't recruit vital workers because they can't afford to live is a good sign that they aren't paid enough with the current costs of living.

Yes, these workers are offered an insoluble economic equation. And we wonder why numeracy is poor in the teacher workforce...

Out of interest - for high street solicitors what is work-life balance like? Are people expected to stay late etc as in some jobs like banking/criminal barristers?

There's just so much variation and it depends on the firm culture, the specialism and how many emergencies and deadlines you tend to deal with.

Thinking of my own experiences and those of friends and colleagues, I have worked in one firm where I barely ever stayed more than 15 minutes late, though I didn't take a full lunch, and another where it was frowned on to leave anything close to finishing time and I got evils for having to go because of childcare. They were doing the same sort of work so it was purely a firm culture thing. There are firms where the workload is worse than others so it's not possible to get everything done without staying late, and some solicitors have much better support than others.

Also some client groups are a lot more unpredictable than others. So for example I remember a colleague doing a care law case where the child had a non accidental injury. The party we were representing changed their story fairly late in proceedings and with a hearing I think the next day. So my colleague was there probably half the night, as they had helpfully turned up at 5pm, drafting a new statement. I would imagine so were the solicitors for the other parties. Whereas with something like probate, the clients are much less likely to have mental health and drug problems so you probably get fewer last minute surprises: I don't mean the workload is lower necessarily, just that you probably get more than 5 minutes warning. Court stuff can sometimes drag on unexpectedly too, though not all solicitors do court work.

I would also say that there are workaholics as there are in every sector, and people using the job as their social life.

Interesting article

That suggests that barristers in their second year don’t earn below £40K?

I taught for 33 years full time and attained a reasonable salary but it wasn't the money that made me quit. It was the way I was treated. £80,000 wouldn't have been ample recompense.

My DD and DS both steered clear of teaching as did the children of all my teacher friends. The DS is in the charity sector as happy as Larry earning £10,000 less than I did when I left and the DD is on £24,000 more than my final salary after five years' work doing Communications for a city firm.

Teaching. Not much money. Burnout job. The average teaching career is now about five years.