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

[Rollovers]

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 has recently qualified as an accountant specialising in corporate tax. At age 25 she already earns over 50k. She chose that field because the money is good and it is a job that can be done pt/job share/working from home so will be compatible with having DC in the future. It’s also very compatible with her skill set. She is numerate, analytic, creative and very organised.

She has worked very hard to get to this position and has a lot more hard work in the future but she is fully aware that it is ridiculous that she earns so much more that friends who are junior doctors/nurses/midwives and literally responsible for other people’s life or death.

I have many friends who are teachers. From what they tell me those on the highest pay (same level of responsibility) are those (surprisingly) in the public sector.
I used to work in a public sector company and when it was privatised the pay went DOWN. The pension was cut to a fraction of the public sector one and rights were eroded.
I work in post graduate degree level aeronautical engineering and the pay is LESS than a teacher gets.
It is a myth that private is better than public. My husband has tried both and has just left private to return to the public sector because it is so much better.

Lots of points here. Firstly, teaching is a degree based job. Someone who goes into teaching will have a large student loan to pay off. Secondary teachers also normally have done a postgraduate qualification = more loans, and more years not earning, saving for a house or putting aside for a pension.
Most teachers work very ,very long hours. When worked out per hour, this can be well below minimum wage. (personal experience). For the level of qualifications, and the hours and the fact that it is a very stressful job, teachers are underpaid.

Newly qualified midwife here. I contracted to 36 hours a week salary of £22022 per annum. Regularly stay late and so cpd outside working hours as required for revalidation. Lunch is 45 mins in 13 hours. My outgoings, just the basics such as rent and utilities exceed my income. I training for 3 years for a degree for this career and I love my job, passionately. However, I could earn more in tescos for about the same hours. So do I think I am remunerated adequately, no I don’t. Will I leave as a result of it, no

Aeronautical engineer:
Student loans. Tick
Long working hours. Tick
No paid overtime. Tick
Degree, Post graduate qualifications, etc. Tick.
Stressful with responsibility for ensuring aircraft is safe to fly with hundreds of passengers. Lives at stake. Tick

My husbnd and I were/ are teachers, he retired nearly 4 years ago at just 60. After 39 years of full time teaching primary he retired on about £34,000 and gets a £17,000 pension. Our 3 sons in law, between 28 and 42 all earn more than he did when he retired. Our 3 daughters never went into teaching even though they all earn less than I did full time. They just had and saw 2 parents as teachers !!!

I worked out my husband's teaching, planning, marking etc hours once against his pay. £6.66p per hour. About 8 years ago. So yes, less than minimum hourly rate even then.

I definitely think that my generation was one of the last to have a genuine chance of getting on the property ladder for most people in their 20s. When I first bought a house the multiple was 2.5x joint income. Given an average income of 27,000 each as stated somewhere upthread, that would give a mortgage of 67,500. Even with a 20k deposit there are huge chunks of the country where that wouldn’t get a 1 bed flat.
A lot of the blame for property inflation can lie with the selling of council houses in the 80s, and the buy to let sector making property a speculation rather than somewhere to live. Huge property inflation. There have always been private landlords (my mum and nan were in private rented) but that was usually owned by the very rich or companies. Add to that holiday homes pushing local people out of their home market.

DH is a GP. works full time, 7-8 most days. He trained for 5 years (£45,000 course fees plus living costs for 5 years). He has been a GP for over 10 years now, pays well over £5,000 a year in insurance and registration and earns £55,000. This is not a great amount given the debt he is now servicing!

It’s not just a public / private sector thing. I worked for decades as a professional scientist for a blue chip company and my salary never reached £30k. So I think teachers and nurses earn well! But obviously they are low earners compared to a city banker or something.

I think part of the issue is whether people are comparing like for like, and misunderstandings on both sides can cause resentment.

For example, I have a job as an accountant in a Big 4 firm - something which is recognised generally as being 'high paid' (and reasonably high stress etc.)

I have a very close friend who is a teacher. When comparing the two at 5 years post grad:

Myself:
All As / A* at GCSE and A level. 2:1 from a Russell group uni, 2 years studying for accountancy exams whilst working full time.
Work life balance now - generally work 9am - 6:30 (ish, can be a lot later) and get 25 days hol plus bank holidays.
My take home pay after student loan deductions and pension deductions (me paying in 8% and company paying in 12%) is c.£2400.
My forecast pension is set to pay out about £12k when I retire if i took an annuity.

My teacher friend:

A/B/C at GCSE and A level. Got a 2:1 from a poly, 1 year teacher training.
She is currently a head of year with additional responsibilities so gross pay of c.£35k (I don't know her exact take home but say £2140 taking into account student loan and pension).
Her pension contributions are not dissimilar to mine (c.9.6%) however, this will entitle her to a 'career average' payout, far exceeding my very paltry £12k per year. Therefore, whilst the pay is definitely lower, the pension is very valuable.

She also gets a significant number of holidays a year (some of which will be used for marking).The greater time off means she has the option of either making additional money through exam marking (she got about £2k last year) and she could tutor.

Should either of us have children, she would be able to save a fortune in not paying for school holiday childcare costs.

Therefore, on balance, each carer path has different pros and cons, but teaching, when taking into account the whole package (e.g. the pension, time off, scope to make additional income) is not that noncompetitive when compared to similar roles.

The difference, is the working environment that comes with being a teacher, and it takes a very dedicated person to do that.

The above is a very long winded way of saying that the pay is not 'bad' for being a teacher when looking at everything, it just takes a specific type of person to do it, and given the current staffing levels, the pay should be increased as it is not enticing people in!

SlappingJoffrey

DH's firm is not one of the big names, despite his salary. It is a regional northern firm. It has one main office in our city, and 2 or 3 much smaller ones in the surrounding areas. Whilst not all the solicitors are on DH's salary many are on very good, much higher than teachers salaries.

We have a fair number of solicitor and barrister friends dotted around the country, in a range of settings. Likewise we have a number of teacher friends because of our own jobs. Everyone of the lawyers (solicitors and barristers rather than legal execs) are on higher salaries than the teachers at similar ages/years experience.

I know some firms pay lower, but I don't think it is uncommon, in our experience, for lawyers to be earning more than teachers.

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?

DH, as an experienced solicitor, usually works 5 days a week from around 8:15am to 6:40pm. He leaves the house the same time as me and dd - around 7:45am and he gets home around 7pm. I get home earlier. DH very rarely brings work home. If he does it might be some time keeping or the odd accounts he wants to get to balance. He does answer some client and colleague emails at home, and will check them once a day on holiday. He gets, and takes, 30 days holiday a year.
He does do some networking but this is mostly in work time, maybe a handful of times involve evenings. Sometimes I go with him for evenings and meals out too, with clients and contacts. Its never weekends luckily. He never has to work away from home overnight or overseas fortunately.

So yes, longish hours but not excessively so and no work being brought home.

My DP has been a teacher for 3 years, he's a maths specialist and earns £40k, he doesn't work any holidays which means 13 weeks a year off. He says he has an easy ride so I don't know...

There are serious, and increasing, shortages of teachers, nurses and midwives. If you can't attract people into an essential profession - and they don't get much more essential - then you aren't paying them enough. They're pretty obviously underpaid for the training, intelligence, conditions, and professional demands/risks or we wouldn't be so short on them.

People are making the wrong comparisons. A nurse or teacher in the private sector will get paid more than a nurse or teacher at the same level in the public sector not just public V private in general.
I think it's underpaid for the role it is. They are high profile but that's because teachers educate the future generation and nurses help keep them healthy. Society wouldn't function without people in these jobs.

I for one would pay emergency services, teachers and nurses more especially with the ridiculous cuts austerity has imposed on them due to the mistakes of the private sector financiers.

So aragog your DH is on over 100k in a small northern firm? You said he's on many multiples of what your teaching salary would be, so I can't see any way this would be less than 6 figures. If so, he's uncommon, probably commercial and he isnt likely to be high street (unless a partner at a big one?) which is where the lowest private sector salaries are. Though not lowest per se, that'll be places like CAB.

I wouldn't say its unusual for solicitors to be paid more than teachers either, there are whole specialisms where they all are, but nor is it unusual for us to be paid the same or less. The fact is that there are a great many of us in the low 20s to low 40s, ie teacher bracket, and that many of us start off lower.

It's a sector where there is massively more variation in wages than something like nursing or teaching. So it's not a question of some firms, in certain specialisms it's basically all of them. Your DH simply would not ever earn that salary in care law, asylum, welfare benefits, non-corporate immigration, mental health, action against the police etc. These are of course a different planet to corporate.

Accountancy isn't always highly paid either. Although often it is, it's not a guaranteed route to a huge salary.

40k after 3 years. Bollocks.

Teacher here. Just about to leave the profession after 19 yrs.
Started on 17,000 and worked my way up to 43,000. Now earning less than an NQT (as a supply teacher)
Looking at NHS admin jobs now starting at my graduate wage.
I've realised money doesn't equate to health...

I think nurses and midwives are quite poorly paid for the hours that they do. But I think teachers just like to moan and I've read just one too many on here so here goes.
Teachers are not 'highly' paid but not poorly paid either particularly considering the hours they work and the holidays. Teachers always site marking, lesson prep leading to 60 hour weeks, they may work long hours in their first couple of years teaching but after that there is very limited lesson prep and from my expereience virtually no marking whatsoever. They teach the same topics year in year out, I have 4 chidren and they all learn exactly the same in every subject in every school year, even down to the same books in English. Books are almost never marked, it is standard policy for work to be marked by the children themselves, mark schemes are posted online and they mark their own or each others. Detentions are even given for unmarked work, it's part of the learning process! School books are 'reviewed' every half term and possibly 'marked' once every term, never more so where is all this marking time? (My children attend a very high achieving school btw).
My parents were both teachers and my sister and all moaned constantly about teaching. Teachers moan about pupils, parents other teachers, pay everything and anything. I would never have been a teacher ever ever after hearing my parents moan constantly but now as a single parent of 4 (not my choice) it is the only job that would fit in with school holidays. It pays ok and the pension is excellent, working hours short, yes short most teachers are off the premises by 5pm and long holidays, I wish I had trained to be a teacher. Instead I went into the 'high flying', 'highly paid' world of corporate tax. Yes they pay but they want your blood in exchange. I could be in the office until midnight every day for a couple of weeks, there was no choice, it was not conducive to being a mum and in those days there was no part time work and women who took extended maternity were never promoted again. My ex worked the same and so I had no choice but to change careers to have a family and unlike my parents who were both home by 5pm every night to have family tea at 6pm my ex never saw the children from Sunday evening to Saturday morning when the were young as they would be asleep when he got home. (This is very common for city workers to get home 7.30-8pm every day with the 'high flyers' even later, my friends husband was a trader and got home around 11pm to get up again at 5am every day. As a family with both parents as teachers we also had all the holidays together and you can't put a price on this time. Yes it wasn't fancy holidays to the Caribbean but 6 weeks camping in the south of france, I look back and wonder what my parents moaned about for all those years and why teachers still moan today. I have also worked as a business manager at a school and seen from the inside the hours worked (and heard the moaning). There is no comparison to the hours worked by city commuters, teachers should try it and see who works the longer hours and with 4 weeks holiday for most people. Oh and then there's the pensions, my dad retired on an enhanced pension at 55, 50% of his final salary for the rest of his life to play golf 3 times a week. I on the other hand paid max AVC's into my pension when younger to then see the company go bust (standard life) and my pension largely disappear, I constantly struggle to find work to fit round school days and finding a well paid term time job is pretty much impossible.
Oh and the only people in a school to be paid for the holidays are the teachers. I have seen threads on here by teachers claiming that they do not get paid for the holidays but that their salary is spread over the year, this is patently not true (I worked managing the salaries). Teachers get paid in full for all the holidays, office staff, caretakers, cooks, managers, and even teaching assistants do not; whatever salary is advertised as the full time salary you do not get paid this unless you area a teacher, everyone else gets paid 5 weeks holiday a year and the rest of the school holidays are deducted as unpaid leave from the advertised annual salary and then this salary is evenly spread over the whole year. So as a school business manager recruited on a salary of £27k I found to my cost that I received nothing like £27k, a teacher however recruited on £27k will receive £27k, there is no unpaid leave deduction for teachers whatever claims are made on here. Teaching assistants however, are very poorly paid and in addition they are also not paid for the holidays.

There are a few posts on here from teachers saying their children are not teachers as they have seen what a poorly paid career it is but children go by what they learn from their parents and if it's constant moaning then yes they won't become teachers, I think it's time teachers voiced the many many positives of being a teachers and realised how lucky they are to have a family friendly career, with reduced working hours, long holidays and an excellent pension and to stop comparing their salaries to high flying city salaries because although many teachers are graduates they are not usually the high flyers in life in any case.

qwerty, I am not disagreeing with all you say, but that exam marking your friend does to supplement her earnings will be done in term time, not in holiday time. That is why they can't, in general, recruit enough exam markers either...

Oh and my parents still do the odd hour here and there tutoring to top up their pension, what other work can you do for an odd hour? The going rate where I live in the home counties is £50 per hour for maths and science tuition and tutors are fully booked, probably adding to the excellent school results which the teachers take credit for!

scuba, for someone so highly informed , you could have joined the profession. Since you apppear to think the only pre requisite is moaning at length which you seem to be proficient at.

I'm not sure experiences of one's parents in teaching decades ago are particularly relevant here. The professional has changed colossally even in the past decade, I know that from friends and family doing the job. Teaching isn't the only job where that's the case of course, conditions for most are getting shittier generally, but this does mean a teacher in their 20s or 30s now has a very different experience to one who has completed their teaching career.