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?!

So are you saying to some extent this is because of an electorate that kept voting in governments which didn’t improve conditions?

I think people need to make a bit more noise in the Uk, this isn’t a topic I see or hear discussed much at all be it in the media or on forums like MN.

The government don’t feel any pressure to address this issue - if they even can?

Cost of living has risen anyway, with wagw stagnation to boot. Where's all the money going? The 1%? National debt repayments?

But your salary was paid to you because they knew your abilities and work ethic, your mentoring skills and resilience, and probably contained elements of performance bonus and long service award.

We always offer new joiners lower, because we don't know how they will perform, we still need to train them and it enables us to recognise and reward early effort and hard work. That's common practice.

I applied for a COO role with an NGO. Very similar to my last job, which paid £80K+. I was prepared to drop to £70K as it was a smaller organisation. The salary was described as “competitive.” They seemed interested, and at interview, asked me what salary I was looking for. I said I couldn’t move for less than £70K. They looked at each other and the chair said “Actually we were thinking of £38K… I suppose that wouldn’t work for you?” A waste of everyone’s time!

Well, it's not hard to ask for the salary range before committing to an interview. Lesson learnt for next time.

@Meadowfinch no our salaries are set we don’t get bonuses etc. this is just a recent thing that they have lowered them. They were previously advertised at the same rate as what we all got depending on which level you were .

My starting salary in 2009 as a graduate was £16,100. My impression is that starting salaries have risen.

It isn’t just starting salaries! I keep seeing jobs advertised with more responsibility and more hours but lower than my current salary. It feels like they are going down rather than stagnating.

It’s truly shocking, but as an example I do remote consulting work, and am very regularly competing head to head with “international” (almost always India and Nigeria) peers who are able to deliver at a fraction of my cost.

Oh, and I get to deal with much worse law and order, vast swathes of the population refusing to work more than 20 hours per week, and stonking tax expenses. I can’t see a doctor for basic check ups, and public transport is regularly out of service yet my car is increasingly unaffordable (what is it with the parking fines? Do other people get lots of them too?).

All in all, it’s not the same country it was. Look at satellite images from 1980 vs now. London was an outlier then and was propping up our economy along with oil. Look at images now and we’re just another place. I’m just waiting for house prices to massively crash, because all the but to let properties just cant be supported with such a weak economy.

Immigration. Adding hundreds of thousands of newly arrived workers every year suppresses wages.

It's also the reason the roads are clogged up, plus why rents and house prices are so high.

Every advertised job should have compensation included in the job description. It gives a helpful indication of the role’s complexity, and is already mandatory in some other places (certain states in America for example). Please don’t blame someone for applying for a senior role and being annoyed at the ridiculously low salary.

Lol that's a salary of a graduate 2 years in at my workplace.

I will judge a person sufficiently senior to apply for a c suite role who doesn't have the nous to find out the salary beforehand, it's not difficult at that level to ask before committing to interview. Or any level really, but a junior/ entry level person may not have the guts to do it whereas a senior person absolutely should. That poster wasted her own time.

I know this isn't a popular view but nothing has kept up. The tax brackets are still the same as they were 10 years ago but everything is at least 50% more expensive. It's insane and depressing.

Quite. We are a small country and rapid population growth for whatever reason means everyone is poorer.

As per The Economist British wages as adjusted for inflation have been flat since 2008. And that's an overall figure. They've declined substantially in real terms for public sector workers, and housing inflation has been much higher than overall. It's a matter of serious economic concern and a major component of the Tory economic legacy, along with Brexit and austerity.

Currently working 35 hours per week, which isn’t especially part time.

But if wages keep rising so will the cost of living.

So how do you explain the current cost of living rises? A low wage economy is not a strong one.

Housing was an issue even without immigration. The UK has consistently failed to build enough to keep up with demand since the 1980s, even more so for anything affordable. And despite constant talk about levelling up, London and the South East have continued to do better economically than the rest of the UK.

Raw population growth alone doesn't tell the whole story. Household size has decreased, so the same number of people comprises more households and therefore requires more units of housing.

As per The Economist British wages as adjusted for inflation have been flat since 2008. And that's an overall figure. They've declined substantially in real terms for public sector workers, and housing inflation has been much higher than overall. It's a matter of serious economic concern and a major component of the Tory economic legacy, along with Brexit and austerity.

We are fucked though because of the financial implications of the changing demographics

Studies have shown that teachers in the UK are earning around 10% less (in real terms) than they were 15 years ago. Basically everyone’s getting poorer. Wealth inequality, rapid globalisation and rising costs, poor political choices … that’s just one area but I’m sure it’s the same across public services. You’d have to be brave to choose a public service path now.

Nope, minimum wage has also gone up by far more that inflation and cost of living index, so its gone up at the bottom level too. It's the middle where it's not gone up, in fact the differentials have shrunk between unskilled/minimum wage and those on the lower middle ranges, ie semi skilled and part qualified, first rung or two up the career ladder, etc.

Quite. We are a small country and rapid population growth for whatever reason means everyone is poorer.

It's far more nuanced than that. Turing housing into an asset did so much damage & that is not the fault of immigration. Immigrants pay tax & we need more tax.

The country is poorer because of no investment by companies or government particularly into young people. We also have huge intergenerational inequality now with high taxes on income but not wealth so people can't build the same wealth.

Yes this is what I was saying upthread and when you consider those on MW are more likely to receive top up benefits too, the lower middle are really screwed. Particularly those with student loans.

To be fair, a starting salary of £30k in 2009 would have been considered high by most people. My DN is about to start her graduate job on £32k (tech - not London) and that’s high compared her peers.