Why are UK graduate salaries so low compared with banking, law and the USA

[ByAmusedJadeFish]

Why are grad salaries and entry level salaries so low for most industries in the UK? 35k is the median. Yet ppl in banking and law start on 70k. And ppl in the USA make double for the same role. e.g. a big 4 auditor makes 32k in the uk, the same guy makes 60k in the usa

You can’t really compare with the US when that salary also has to pay for all their healthcare and they get far fewer days in annual leave.

Because banking, law and US companies all make a lot of money, hence they can afford to pay higher salaries.

Supply and demand, innit? Tony Blair's "graduate earnings premium" doesn't work when there are so many graduates. We can't all be above average.

Because the cost of living is way higher in the US.

We like finance and law
We don't like industry
Goes back some time, in the 80s MrsT suggested we didn't need industry only services. Why manufacture when you make more pushing the money around.
USA earnings can be higher with more respect to manufacturing. There are however a lot low wage jobs there with a lot not far from bankruptcy with no real social backup.

Cost of living is much higher in the US. Like Dubai, salaries have to be much higher to account for that. When I lived in the US, I moved away 15 years ago so these numbers are not current at all, one bag of food shopping would cost me $50. That was 3-4 days of food for just me living alone. My health insurance was $600 a month. That’s obviously just for the obligatory insurance, not for actual healthcare. GP visits $35-50 each. Follow up appointment after I had an abnormal smear cost me $1000. And this was 2 decades ago, not even modern day costs.

Salaries in finance, law and medicine have always been higher. They have to be to attract people to invest in education and work those ridiculous hours. I wouldn’t do it. No matter how much you paid me.

Because the US cost of living is eye-watering. A fact that I would have thought a graduate would have realised at the outset.

Businesses will often pay the lowest wage they can get away with. There are an awful lot of grads now, looking to take the first step in their career.

My industry, at least in the smaller/medium sized firms, tends to have lowish wages for grads. It offers an entry to a career path that can be lucrative, but for the first couple of years you would probably be earning more stacking shelves at the local supermarket. The difference comes later down the line when you have some experience behind you.

Judging by the number of applicants we get, many seem to be happy with that trade off. If it was a smaller pool of candidates, we would need to raise the starting salary to be more attractive...but we already have more applicants than we can process effectively, so the salary stays low.

(I say 'we' as in the firm I currently work for, and other firms I have worked for previously. I am not involved in these decisions!)

It can be $150-600+ per month for health care plans alone in the US.