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.

So whilst regional firms do pay less that London firms, it is quite clear why, as the OP asked, people complain that key workers are poorly paid.

Please tell me you don't think that link is any kind of refutation to any of the points I've made?

Those are large firms mostly engaged in commercial work. Those are the salaries that everyone agrees are high. Literally nobody thinks there aren't a smattering of firms outside London paying deputy head type salaries to newly qualified solicitors.

The point is, though, that they're not representative. They're one part of the profession. Very few of them are engaged in things like care work, mental health, asylum, welfare benefits, the stuff that actually does pay even quite experienced practitioners key worker type wages. And spot the one that actually does quite a bit of legal aid, Stephensons, and whaddya know, that's the teacher or nurse type salary (well rather less initially, actually). Thus proving my point not yours!

I should also point out again that I'm not posting to suggest that nurses and teachers are paid enough. The opposite, as my contributions upthread should make clear. If we were paying enough to nurses, we wouldn't have a recruitment crisis. However, solicitors were brought into the conversation, and the reality is that there are whole swathes of us on key worker type wages. Meaning we're not actually a helpful example to assist the OP in articulating her point.

querty How have you got to a take home of £2150 given 9.6% pension contributions on a 35k salary? I make that just under £2k on 19-20 tax rates I think?

So actually your take home is 20% higher? I'm not saying 35k is a bad salary at all, it's a good salary - but it is still significantly lower.

I also think your friend is in an unusual position to be so well paid only 3 years after finishing her NQT year.

Teachers pay is terrible if you factor in things that non-teachers don't even realise happen. My mum was a teacher and I knew she worked a lot but it didn't really sink in until I became a teacher. On paper the salary looks good but we aren't actually paid for the hours we do. Teachers are contracted for 1265 hours a year which is brilliant if you look at our hourly rate but every teacher does waaaay more than that. I easily do an 11 hour day (7am-6pm) and then hours at the weekend. I spend a lot of my own money on my class and classroom, I'm a primary teacher. Also we are scrutinised more than any other professional, regularly criticised by parents, other teachers and the government. There's that quote that floats around that teachers make more minute by minute decisions than any other profession. Yes the holidays look attractive and some people think we only work 9-3 (every teacher wishes) but it's not a job that you ever leave behind when you go home, you go to sleep thinking about those children. I've been teaching for 15 years and often consider leaving a profession I used to love.

I have a friend who feels similarly. She says there are loads of teachers plotting ways out.

Two degrees now needed to get higher pay www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-48058013

Really interesting link from BBC website, linking graduate pay of those with degrees/post-grads etc.

The pay differential between graduates and non-graduates is greater for women than men because non-graduate men are more likely to go into well paid skilled manual jobs than women (so, e.g. plumbers are better paid than hairdressers). Or male dominated jobs tend to be valued more than female dominated jobs.

The public sector get great pensions compared to the private sector so headline salaries are misleading. Are there stats anywhere that factor that in?

The pensions are nothing like they once were. They used to be brilliant but they've been decimated like everything else.

And I'm pretty bitter that i pay approx 200 quid a month into something that will be worth sod all in the future and I'll probably not be alive to utilise

As said up thread-lots of pensions will be massively affected by the fact that heads cannot afford to have expensive teachers in classes when they can have an NQT so part timers are being refused the chance to go back up to full time after having their kids and are stuck jobsharing with a TA-doing most of the work for half the pay and a very reduced pension. Anyone over about M4 will struggle to get a job in another school either unless they are going for SLT and there are obviously not many SLT roles in each school so these jobs are very limited.

It's typical of the way a Gov pays the public sector - pensions offered to staff today won't affect the public purse in the current political term but we have seen how public pensions have now been cut by moving retirement date to 67 years old - not many private pensions making that move, and I expect if it won't stay at 67 years - the Gov has promised pensions it hasn't saved for.

I know this is not helpful but in Ireland we have to have a teacher in a classroom,we are not allowed to have a TA in charge or to teach a class. We don’t really have TA’s as such they are called SNA’s (special needs assistant) and they are assigned to a specific child with special needs

The public sector get great pensions compared to the private sector so headline salaries are misleading. Are there stats anywhere that factor that in?

But there is no guarantee with pensions that what you have been promised now by the government is what you will actually get. Loads of public sector employees have accepted jobs 20 years ago on the understanding that their pension arrangements were good and they need to factor that into their overall benefits packages. Then 15 years down the line, suddenly they are told that they aren't getting that pension any more, they now have to make double the contributions that they used to, and when they retire, they will only get half as much money as they were initially promised. They can't go back in time and make different choices, so they are stuck with it.

I have no problem with the public sector changing the pension arrangements of people who are entering their employment, because they know up front what they are getting. But for people to spend 15 or 20 year of their working life being told that they will have X pension when they retire, only to then be told 'we've changed our minds, you are now getting Y' is very unfair indeed, but it has happened to loads of public sector employees, who had accepted lower paying jobs in the belief that they had effectively deferred some of their salary until their retirement years.

But for people to spend 15 or 20 year of their working life being told that they will have X pension when they retire, only to then be told 'we've changed our minds, you are now getting Y' is very unfair indeed, but it has happened to loads of public sector employees, who had accepted lower paying jobs in the belief that they had effectively deferred some of their salary until their retirement years.

Equally unfair though is that self employed pensions are usually invested in the stock market - woe betide you if there is a massive stock market crash just before you retire! Or, the elderly people who rely on the interest on a life time's savings to top up their pension - and interest rates have been kept very low by this government for political reasons!

SlappingJoffrey you are completely missing the point. Re-read the OP. They asked why people think nurses et al are poorly paid. People are replying by explaining that other professions are paid a whole lot more. It really doesn't matter if some solicitor in Bognor gets paid the same as a nurse. People are not comparing to Bognor-person. They are looking at professions in general and ON THE WHOLE, professions like lawyers, bankers et al are paid a whole lot more than nurses. Finding lower paid solicitors to rebuke this is pointless. The answer to OPs actual question and not some long-winded breakdown of different types of legal roles is that other professions regularly pay a whole lot better. And nursing and teaching are professions that require university degrees and a good deal of other personal skills. That is the point and the answer. This is not supposed to be about individual lawyers incomes.

This all comes down to location and housing costs - £40k is low pay where we live because we couldn't afford to live here (South East) - if we were in public sector jobs we would move to a cheaper part of the country.

Notinmyduty which is why in pleasant northern English towns there are lots of applications for any teaching vacancy advertised, and in similar southern English towns there are sometimes no suitable applicants at all...

Perhaps public sector jobs should be paid as appropriate to post code, meaning earning £80k in Guildford £35k in Clitheroe for equivalent posts...

No, you're missing the point letsgohooray. It wasn't me who brought solicitors wages into the discussion, but if its important enough to be raised, its important enough to be raised accurately.

You claim that solicitors are on the whole paid more than teachers etc, but you have provided zero evidence of this. The list you provided earlier actually shows how poor your understanding of this subject is. If you think the salaries the likes of Addleshaw Goddard pay their NQs are remotely representative, you just do not know enough about the subject to be posting about it. Nor is it simply individual solicitors incomes, it is entire areas of the profession, not one random anomaly in Bognor. I am not asking you if you think this is true or not, I am telling you that it is. There is wild variation in what solicitors get paid.

Thus, the earnings of solicitors will continue to be a poor example to make the actually rather important point that many key workers arent well paid for the job they do, because so many of us are on teacher type wages. It will therefore need to be refuted every time someone makes the claim.

Perhaps public sector jobs should be paid as appropriate to post code, meaning earning £80k in Guildford £35k in Clitheroe for equivalent posts... Too late now but it might have helped had Gov policies not encouraged an over heated housing market by ensuring more new houses were built and cutting off the favourable tax position for owners of buy to lets. And restricting foreign ownership. Reducing stamp duty now really won't help!

You've clearly only made those personal attacks because you know you're in the wrong and cannot refute my argument. How embarrassing for you.

Perhaps public sector jobs should be paid as appropriate to post code, meaning earning £80k in Guildford £35k in Clitheroe for equivalent posts...

That would deepen the north south divide. Just like the help for first time buyers buying properties more expensive than my 4 bed house in a naice area of the north.

Notinmyduty why would giving owners of buy to lets tax breaks help? Surely that's part of the problem, encouraging people to remortgage property 7 to buy property 8 pushes up prices, meaning those not already owning multiple properties can't buy one to live in...

Although I might have misunderstood and that's what you meant...

CountFosco do you think it's a good thing that you can afford a 4 bed in a naice area and other people in the same job, working and saving exactly as hard, can't afford a 2 bed?