What is happening to starting salaries in this country?!

[user8636283901]

My starting salary in 2009 - so mid-GFC - was £30,000.

That was 16 years ago! And in one of the worlds worst global recessions since the Great Depression of the '30s.

I was casually looking at starting salaries in similar fields to mine and it seems like they're barely moved, all the while the cost of living is miles ahead of where it was 16 years ago.

Why are wages so low in this country?! Why haven't they moved up?!

Yes, this. There is a bigger disparity now between those at the top and those in the middle. We've normalised greed as being inevitable.

I take all your points on board, especially the student loan debt. I used the Bank of England calculator to inflate my old starting salary which was supposed to calculate what it would buy now but maybe it didn’t include housing or student debt.

This was the case when I graduated in the late 90s. It meant temping for a while (and I did all sorts, but ideally you target agencies in your line of work) before I could apply for permanent roles.

My first job in publishing paid a massive £12k, and when I left that industry five years later I was on £27k. My job back then is as good as obsolete now but the few remaining advertisements are offering £30-£35k, in London, so barely any increase. I paid £500/month plus bills for a room in a shared flat in 2007 but I’d be paying nearly double that now.

I’m on just over £30k now as a civil servant - fine for me because I bought a house when I was younger and they were much cheaper. But colleagues in their 20s and 30s on the same money have no chance of buying somewhere because all their salary goes on rent, bills and transport. It’s unsustainable.

https://equalitytrust.org.uk/news/blog/why-pay-ratios-are-key-tackling-uk-inequality-five-things-worth-knowing/

Some sectors have kept up though - nq was £32k, now is £55k for same role 15 years later

But the roles in the middle in the same sector have been squeezed and not kept up to same extent

Can you get temping jobs for a STEM role then? Because they mostly seem to be office-based.

At my company, new starters (graduates) get minimum wage . Unfortunately the job market is so dire that people take it.

And before anyone says, well they're young and inexperienced so why should they get more than minimum wage - a) they're not all 21 and straight out of uni, and b) if any old randoms could do the job the company wouldn't need to hire graduates. If they want graduates, salaries should reflect that.

These roles and salaries you've linked to are pretty fair - they are entry level in a specialist sector where the employer will have to put a lot of time, supervision and effort in and in return the employee is also gaining a significant future earnings opportunity. These aren't roles that anyone is intended to stay in for long, they go on to qualify and the move up quite rapidly, a candidate could go from this to £60k within 2-3 years, trebling their salary

Surely it depends what kind of role and what area of STEM? But temping as something, anything, is better than doing nothing, and will result in references and connections. I work in a tech area of the CS and until recently we took on people on fixed-term contracts. They came from all sorts of backgrounds, not necessarily related, but they all had some entry-level work experience which gave them transferable skills.

Yes. A lot of our AOs rely on overtime.

Despite working full time in the civil service, many of our new recruits just can't afford to leave home.

I didn’t have a lot of money at all as a student and lived very frugally on my grant, no parent contributions. My grant paid all rent, bills and it worked out I had £20 per week for food, buses and going out. I might have gone overdrawn every now and then but I didn’t have a massive overdraft to pay off when I finished and most of my friends were the same. I was at a midlands uni though so it was probably quite a cheap place to live and walkable.

I was lucky to get a job more or less as soon as I finished uni so no debt to build up.

Another issue is roles that are really full time and until recently would have been, but are now advertised as 28 hour, or 30 hour, to reduce the wage and benefits offered!

I work part time in a leadership HR role in a charity (recently made redundant from my other minimum wage job which I don’t think I’ll be able to find anything to fill that gap). I have a degree and nearly 30 years of really decent public sector experience under my belt and I bring home £1500 a month. It’s just me, kids and pets at home and I have no idea how I’m keeping my head above water. I don’t think I’m alone.

Totally agree, and we have fallen far behind comparable countries since then.

I worked in the US for a few years in the early 2000s and UK and US salaries were broadly similar then. Now my American colleagues earn 2 to 3 times as much as their British equivalents. European salaries have also overtaken the UK.

My starting salary in 1998 was £19k (consultancy in city but a junior admin type role). According to the inflation calculator that would be £36k today. I lived in zone 1 on that salary. Can you imagine a graduate starting today with £36k and an expectation of zone 1 living?

I must have spent too much going out! I didn’t receive the maintenance grant as my parents both worked full-time and I was the youngest child. They made up the grant to the level I would have received from the Council but absolutely no more. I was sometimes allowed to take some food back from home. I did work many of the holidays doing temp jobs.

The company I work for pays grads in London £26k. I remember hiring for similar position 11 years ago in Oxforxshire and we offered £25k.

My salary 25 years ago is about the same as it is now adjusted for inflation. Only my job is much more senior, think manager/ head of vs newly qualified entry level.

Hey ho, it could be worse. At least I wasn't starting out with tons of graduate debt getting bigger from the interest than the rate I can pay back.

I really don't think that masters level qs and experience in customer handling should warrant NMW. (or below on that ad)

How come other countries have much better wages? 2008 crash affected most countries worldwide as did Covid.

The problem was that the last government and the Labour one before that didn't think that inequality and the top end incomes increasing exponentially while most stagnated was a problem. When clearly it was, as high earners all invested in the housing market which made prices soar and made it far worse for the majority. Also tax credits were a nice short term idea, but government subsidising incomes just allows employers to take the piss with salaries.

My starting salary in a very serious industry was £16000 about 10 years ago. Living alone was a struggle on that.

Yes, me too. My salary is 1.6 times what it was 14 years ago. It looks impressive but actually things have gone up in price so much, that I don’t feel like I am doing that well considering I am working hard and quite senior.

Yes I noted in my last job, where I worked for about decade, the starting salary stayed exactly the same.

The starting salary for my entry level publishing job in 1999 was £12k - equivalent to £22k today. The company I started my career with now hires new graduates at about £18k.