To think a salary equivalent to £40k p.a. Is not sufficient for...

[CruCru]

...the sort of hours that banking interns seem to put in (according to the Times). It sounds hellish.

It is also completely unreasonable to expect interns to work for free - it means only those with wealthy parents can afford to get this sort of experience.

What's a shit-shoveller? Is this someone who cleans the street for the council? I assume it isn't a sewer worker - for some reason I think they earn more than £12k p.a.

Internships are just like apprenticeships, except for more highly qualified jobs.

Interns do work hard for relatively little money, but then so do students, or people on work experience. It's just one step on the career ladder which will eventually lead to higher pay.

I don't see the problem tbh.

At least with your figures they are earning more than NMW, which puts them in a much better position than carers for example.

Only on mn could 40 grand be derided as a pittance.Our household income is 45 grand before tax and dh works 14 hour days.My heart is not bleeding for this intern!

Compared to the national average, I think 40K is a good salary for (almost) any job - and definitely one that is open to young people with v. little experience.

I don't think carers earn enough for what they do either.

The Shit-Shovellers are an upper-class family (they're in the Book). Being rich beyond the dreams of avarice, they can afford to work for a mere honorarium, namely 12k a year.

I am sitting here crying over the little Tarquins and Anastasias with their paid internships. Won't someone think of the well-connected children?

OK, back to my own dreadfully underpaid job now.

I don't think the guy who died was called Tarquin. It's not much good being considered well connected if your job kills you. In any case, presumably this guy had to apply for an internship like anyone else, I haven't seen anything to say whether he got it through any other connections.

The guy who died was over from Germany for the internship and it's a tragedy.

Agree with others who struggle to feel the salary is unreasonably small.

Doesn't the European working time directive apply anymore? Slam the companies concerned with a huge fine for creating & permitting such a culture.

In one article someone made the comment that all it needed was senior partners to stop saying to clients 'we'll have it to you first thing in the morning' and instead 'we'll have it to you by noon' and the all-nighters would be knocked on the head. I think it was because most of the work is not major project work but quick bursts of info supply. (Happy to be corrected.)

Only on mumsnet. 40k is above the average family income! Its an unbelievably high income for an average person in their early twenties.

Madness.

I have worked in Headhunting for the Investment Banking / Hedge Funds sectors for many years and so I know what their salaries and bonuses are.

Please allow me to put your mind at ease when I tell you they won't be on 40k for long and they'll make a very nice living

The conditions of some internships are shocking, agreed. And yes, surely the European time directive should apply.

The pay though - £40k is more than our household income.

The conditions are shocking, the pay is not. In fact, it would be considered very high pay for a junior academic, in other words somebody with a good PhD and a publication record.

Please allow me to put your mind at ease when I tell you they won't be on 40k for long and they'll make a very nice living

Phew, that's a relief

I'm really pleased that all the huge interest and bank charges I pay go towards these poor struggling individuals who have to work such long hours for so little.

Several points:
It's an internship, not a job. £40k pa is a PRO-RATED estimate of salary. IE. For his 8 weeks internship or whatever duration it was for, he would have received circa £3,330 per month, gross.
Yes, that's a nice sum of money for anyone to receive, but the salary for internships was specifically introduced to end the abuse of unpaid interns and to ensure that internships could be awarded to people who couldn't afford to work for free and have the bank of Mum and Dad pay for their stint at Investment Bank Inc.
It's effectively minimum London Living wage when you divide by the numbers of hours worked. Yes, investment banks, law firm and other "institutions" who recruit top graduates pay them a high salary but they expect in return, employees who are ALWAYS available.
It's tragic that this student died, however it is not necessarily as a direct result of overwork, though it's obviously a nice headline for the Daily Mail. Perhaps wait for the inquest?

£40k? I'll take that please!
DH and I have a combined income of £26k.

I have a Masters and 15 years experience.
DH has 20 years experience and the relevant qualifications in his field.
We work for charities.
DH routinely does massive amounts of overtime but there is no overtime pay because it's a charity.

We will never ever achieve £40k as a household income, and manage ok (although it's very tight on occasion) as a family with kids.
No sympathy for being short on funds for someone on their own earning £40k. If you don't like the lifestyle, then find one you do like.

Interns get that. They are usually also still at uni. First year bankers at analyst level get 65k or thereabouts. Still feel sorry for them? It's a sufficient salary. Even in the City.

You are asked if you wish to opt out of the ETD. Of course you can stay in but that will affect your earnings, potential etc.

ETD is not really very useful.

OK, I'm gonna put it out there: I'm a trainee solicitor working at a City firm and earn more than £40kpa. I'm 26 and started about 2 years ago.

BUT, I work 10 hours per day on a quiet day, many many more plus weekends if we are busy (which is often as I am in mergers and acquisitions). Work that out per hour and it's depressing. We don't get a very big bonus (say about £600 after tax).

I also worked my ass off to get where I am - slogged it through A levels to get into Oxbridge (and before you ask, yes I went to a state school and a pretty crappy one at that), fought off competition to land the job and then slogged it through law school.

As a result of this I'm in huge debt. I lose quite a large chunk of my salary towards debt repayments each month, and of course I have to live in London so there's the £1000+ per month rent. I am also supporting my DH who for various reasons has not been able to work. We are left with very little at the end of the month.

Sooo, the upshot is that at the age my parents (the 'baby boomers') were able to buy a house, run a car and start a family (on their ok salaries as a researcher and a physio), I and my husband are still wallowing in debt, burning cash in rent and buying Asda Smartprice. We have little prospect of getting together a deposit for a flat before I'm 30. Then we can start mayyybe thinking about children, although that is another huge decision to make given my chosen career.

I sometimes wonder why the hell I'm doing it? My brother (23) who is in the army and left school at 16 has already bought a house with his GF, 2 cars and a dog and are living a lovely settled life not in a shithole part of London. Yes he works very hard as well but I wonder who was the smarter one sometimes?

On the plus side, my salary goes up to more than £60kpa when I qualify - meaning that finally, finally, we will be able to start saving.

Diddums

when I was an intern I regularly worked all nighters. Then went straight to work and then straight out to a club. That's how I saved up enough overtime to buy my first flat. That's what people in their early twenties with no mortgage, kids, responsibilities are able to do. and why not while they still have the time and energy for it.

I work in a bank and we all regularly work late when needed to and are often on call (I was woken up at 1 and 3) this morning. it's normal if you work in the city. people don't hand out good salaries for 9-5.

and bear in mind that they are not workin non-stop on their feet like nurses for example are. they are sat at a desk surfing the Internet and then staying late to impress the boss. they aren't actually working as they don't have the clearance/skills/experience to do the real job. they are mainly doing drudgery tidying up projects that no one else wants.

I doubt the fact that the poor guy died (from an epileptic fit?) had much to do with his internship.

£8.30 an hour. That doesn't seem like a lot for somewhere like Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley.

Of course it is. I'm sure they don't pay their cleaners that much.

Interns are learning, really, and they should be glad to get any salary.

£40k was well above what I earned fresh from my PhD at about 30.

PhD students don't earn anywhere near £40k and probably often work just as hard.

Besides, working those hours, where are they going the spend the money on?

I hope they do pay their cleaners more than £8.30 an hour. I pay my cleaner a lot more than that.

Domestic cleaners are paid a relatively high rare per hour because they work in very short (normally 2 hour) shifts so they need to travel between jobs a lot, and also because the personal trust factor of someone in your home means that you really need to keep a good cleaner once you've found them. Neither of these normally apply to office cleaners, who mostly work for around NMW (although some do get screwed for very short shifts by unscrupulous contractors).

That's a shame. Cleaning is very hard work.