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.

Nurses and teachers are high profile and well represented public facing roles where salary comes under scrutiny. Other roles requiring comparable qualifications (degree+) don’t get me same publicity/ outrage

It's all comparative. I earned 35k working in education in local government. My husband earns 140k working in IT. I have a masters degree. He has A levels. I often feel hard done to.
However someone working for minimum wage will see 35k as a fortune.

I have a good degree from a red brick uni, started on 11K a year in a lab (20 years ago), ended up working for a major supermarket in food safety on 40K when I left to have DD1. Became a SAHM if I had stayed I’d no doubt be on 80K at least by now. Retrained to be a teacher in Scotland. NQT year was 22K working at least a 60 hour week. Before the pay rise the most of have expected to earn was 36K unpromotes now it will be about 41K. I think the pay is ok just ok for 60 hours work at least, you never switch off today I’m thinking about work tomorrow. Nurses have it harder with the shifts as well.

I retrained as a midwife after 5 years working in the charity sector. In my previous career (office-based) I was on about 20k; now after a few years of midwifery I'm on 28k. So my earnings have increased, and I'm thankful for that. But, my quality of life overall has gone way, way down. Frequent 12hr shifts without anything to eat (and sometimes nothing even to drink); constant switching between days and nights; abuse from the general public; chronic short staffing; fear of making a mistake and losing my registration - or, worse, irreparably damaging someone's life - because the aforementioned staffing means I have twice as many patients as is safe; the responsibility for people's physical and mental health when you're constantly running on empty yourself; missing weddings, birthdays, christenings, funerals; the endless firefighting and apologising for system failures instead of providing the actual care that you entered the profession for... It just doesn't seem worth it when I could be working 9-6 in an office, with minimal responsibility, for about £350/month less.

I am a teacher and my full time equivalent salary is £42k. I have been in that salary for 10 years and have been teaching for almost 30.
My eldest DD earns just under double that working in HR, she can basically negotiate her own salary. My youngest works in accountancy. Once she has completed her exams in another couple of years she will be on the same as me as a starting salary. Her potential is much greater than mine.

The average UK salary is £27k so by definition anyone earning below that is below average

There are lots of people earning much more, however, there are lots of people earning far less.

It's easy for us to compare nurses, midwives, teachers, etc. because they are a large occupation group with very clear cut salaries for the role/level of experience. It's much harder to talk about the thousands of graduates who left university and went into jobs at the bottom at the bottom of the food chain and never progressed to become accountants or lawyers.

I was earning £40k last year with 20 years experience, working about 50 hours a week, standard 25 days holiday and 8 days bank holiday, stressful, dealing with difficult bosses, etc. That was a jump up as previous job had been 31k. I sometimes wish I had trained as a nurse and hadn't bothered going to university. My pension would be looking much better!

@ViolentGin

"Because they are public sector jobs where the private sector equivalent pays significantly more."

And what is the private sector equivalent, pray tell? Also private sector salaries are paid from company earnings, not from taxes, so successful companies can afford to pay their staff more if they need to.

I don’t think they are I think there’s just this idea that everyone else is getting morefor doing less.

Because they hold lives in their hands or shape the lives they hold. Because the consequences of getting things wrong can be life ending or life altering. Because the public pressure is immense and unrelenting. Because of the toll the work takes on their private lives. I could go on...

So if you were a teacher in a private school you would be earning a lot mor

Depends on the school but round here the independent schools use the same pay scale as the state schools. Though do offer their staff some additional perks such as includes lunch food (often though as they want clubs and activities done in this time too) or reduced frees for own children attending, etc.

Because they hold lives in their hands or shape the lives they hold. Because the consequences of getting things wrong can be life ending or life altering. Because the public pressure is immense and unrelenting. Because of the toll the work takes on their private lives. I could go on...

This ^^

@stressedoutpa you do need a university level 6 course to become a nurse!

I work in a similar statutory sector career. If I was trying to buy my first home now, I wouldn’t be able to afford it (I live in the south). Working long hours, maintaining professional cheeriness, providing an audited service, yet not being able to buy a house is pretty galling. Wages haven’t kept up with the real cost of living, I don’t think, and that’s why the pay seems poor.

I have a lot of responsibility, 2 degrees and lots of experience which we don't feel we are rewarded for. The hours aren't great, 5am alarms do take it out of you! Plus there are lots of deductions due to student loan, tax and pension

I'm a midwife and have 2, potentially more, lives in my hands on a daily basis. If that's not scary enough, add on the fact that medical records are kept for 25 years and someone could try suing you 25 years in the future. The responsibility and fear of litigation is huge compared to the salary, and that's without mentioning the poor work-life balance that comes with shift work! Wouldn't change it for world though (yet, anyway). Maybe one day I can still be a midwife and work Monday-Friday for 50k....

13 years ago after working out my post maternity leave notice I gave up my teaching job to childmind (in Surrey where childminders are very in demand and can charge a reasonable rate) and was better off all in as a childminder than a secondary school teacher. Not having to pay for my own child's childcare was part of it of course.

As it takes a minimum of 4 years of university (subject degree plus post graduate certificate year) and then an in service year as an NQT - so 5 years training to be a qualified teacher, and then at least it took 4 days training to become a childminder (12 hours first aid plus 12 hours general training and a 1 hour Ofsted inspection/ interview) you could be forgiven for thinking teachers are underpaid.

I now earn more than I did as a teacher for doing something different which requires me to work only my set hours and take no work at all home. Teachers early in their careers tend to work a lot in their own time, so the pay per hourworks out very low even if the annual salary is ok.

Teacher here £42k. I think I earn a good salary even though I work bloody hard for it. I have just had a baby and the nurses/women support assistants who looked after me were earning minimum wage: I think that is ridiculous, especially as they are looking after vulnerable members of society whilst doing very long shifts.
At least in teaching we get long holidays despite working for a good chunk of them.

The issue with teaching and nursing is not so much the pay as the working conditions.

Female-dominated jobs with a care element are massively undervalued and underpaid. Even though they arguably carry more responsibility and similar levels of training to male-dominated jobs like architect, accountant etc

I'm a band 5 nurse with 5 years experience. My basic just went up to 26k (and will have a slight increase again in may). I do obviously get more for evenings and weekends. My take home pay after tax, student loan and 9.2%pension contribution is around 1700-1800 depending on how my shifts have been. I pay £120 a year registration fees and am expected to complete CPD on a regular basis to keep up my skills. This is very often in my own time.
My partner is a healthcare assistant in the same trust. He is at the top of band 2. His take home is usually about 1500, I was qualified for 2 years before I started to bring home more than him.

I don't think I'm badly paid per se but it grates enormously that my partner with no formal qualifications, less responsibility and less need for CPD is earning only a few hundred less a month.

They are less well paid than other professionals that require a similar level of education.

It is also hard as a teacher to get a decent salary unless you are in a leadership post. I have taught part-time since kids as full-time plus leadership responsibilities would not be compatible with my family life. I am stuck on the main pay scale despite having been teaching for well over a decade. My full-time wage would be around £34000. Not a bad wage but very little compared to my university peers who didn't go into teaching. I wouldn't say they work longer hours than me either.

I don't think nurses or teachers are badly paid at all. They earn comparable to other graduates with specialist skills working in the public sector eg surveyors, solicitors, social workers. They get good pensions and guaranteed time off. I don't really know why the BBC etc bang on about them being underpaid. Most people in the private sector saw no wage increase during austerity while the media was full of stories about how public sector workers "only" got 1%.

Because yes, the pay is reasonable if you compare it to the average wage. But it is pathetic compared to what you could earn in the private sector working similar hours and having the same level of stress and responsibility.

I was in charge of 30 staff in a role that was far less vital to the future than educating and safeguarding our children. I was working 50 - 60 hours a week and yes, it was stressful at times, but I could take a sick day, time to care for my sick kids, I didn't work during my annual leave, didn't take work home regularly, you get the picture. Also I was paid twice as much as a new teacher, got large bonuses when I achieved targets and wasn't regularly physically and verbally assaulted by the 30 people I was I charge of. Then told it was all my fault and I should be grateful for the 3pm finishes and 13 weeks of 'holiday'. Teaching was an eye opener I must say. It's not the pay that's an issue really, it's the responsibility that's expected of you for it compared to my teaching friends elsewhere in the world.

We think it because they are not.

However, people always assume we work only for the money, and thats not true either.

Personally I think teaching is paid OK if they didnt have to do hours and hours of extra on top.