to think this company are asking for a huge amount for a miniscule salary!?

[Mintyy]

I'm really shocked see here.

When replying, please bear in mind that this is in London.

Salary is crap (for London) but the work load is hardly onerous?

Sounds pretty simple kind of tasks they are asking isn't it? Obviously these are things you might encounter in the job isn't it? A lot of skills listed in job ads aren't actually required by the position. At least that's what I found in my area.

Wages haven't gone up anywhere near the rate of inflation. That is why there seems to be such a discrepancy between that and a wage in 2000.
Bare in mind that a newly qualified teacher in London would get £27,000

That pretty much matches my job and earn less than that, though i am not in London.

Lucky you, Mintyy.

Around that time I was working in central London for just over £18K, doing a job which used my degree, post-grad qual and particular combination of professional experience. With unpaid overtime and no progression path.

We sold into a sector where the customers typically had small budgets, which limited profits. That's just the way it was. My college friends doing jobs with similar requirements sold into sectors with large disposable income, or where customers expected direct profits from buying their products. They earned 50% to 150% more than me.

I put up with it for other reasons.

But I do shake my head in bemusement when people claim that salaries are always a reflection of skills, hard work and rarity. Nah.

It's an entry level job but they want 2 years experience? Amount of tasks seems exceedingly do-able.

Salary not great but considering you'd need at best a GCSE at grade C in maths and English to do most of those tasks they aren't exactly looking for someone uber qualified.

In 2000 I did an office role for about 12-14000 outside of london. I guess I'd see 18000 as reasonable now.

Living expenses have gone up so much and salaries not so much. I've slipped through the net career wise and despite lots of qualifications would be pleasantly surprised to earn 18000 fora a basic job these days (competition would be fierce I guess ) although I'm going to look overqualified and find even that difficult!

It looks like a good stepping stone position. I suspect it would be appealing to someone who has worked in an office environment for a couple of years just on phones/reception and now wants a more active role which may open up better opportunities with other companies.

For an early twenties person, living at home, it seems a good opportunity. For a mid-thirties parent with a mortgage, less so. I'm in Yorkshire and think we pay around that for our admin assistants, maybe slightly less, so the salary on paper does seem low.

Looks reasonable to me

Employment is a very basic economic trade. You trade your time and effort in exchange for money and benefits given to you by an employer. It is that simple.

You do not work unless you value the money and benefits you receive higher than you do your time and effort, just as you don't buy a can of beans unless you value the food higher than you value the money you exchange for it. You get to choose exactly how much you value your end of the exchange.

The other party to the exchange gets to choose how much they value their money, when compared to the amount of labour they are willing to receive in exchange for giving that money away. It is that simple.

In order to be employed, and remain employed, you must provide enough utility to another person to encourage them to give up their money. And you must offer greater utility than those competing for the same money.

If you are unable to provide value to the market, or you believe the market values your time and effort less than you do, then you are free to do other things with your time and labour. Alternatively, you could increase your utility, offer greater value to the market for a greater price, or move to somewhere else where you believe you may get a greater value for your time and effort.

But this is a very basic and simple economic exchange, and provided the employer is content with the employee(s) he gets in exchange for how much he is willing to pay, he is absolutely spot on with his valuation of his money.

Of course, if he is wrong, he will have no employees, and his business will collapse. That is how a market economy works.

Well, that is unfortunate for you PausingFlatly.

I was working in the notoriously underpaid profession of publishing in 1994 before I left London for a couple of years. I needed my degree for the job and had 5 years experience in my field and earned £17,000. It was like a senior assistant role, had my own office junior.

I shared a flat with a friend and my mortgage payments were a third of my take home pay. I felt quite poor!

The only person who could manage on that little money in London must have tiny housing costs, is all I can say.

It's on the money if you ask me

But then I'm used to public sector salaries which are shit and expect ridiculous amounts of work for peanuts

Doesn't it depend how active each area described is - maybe the training sessions are once a week , once a month etc so wouldn't demand a huge amount of time every day but if run daily it is a lot. Overall salary a bit low for London although they offering extras like the Gym and Bupa which are worth at least an extra 5% each month.

Looks reasonable to me. Work is pretty basic and wouldn't require much in the way of qualifications. Salary seems reasonable for the level of responsibility. Nice starting out job I would think.

The pay is terrible at first glance, but the pension/gym etc are good benefits for a job with that level of pay.

It is clearly not meant to be a graduate job, but I expect that a lot of the people who have applied will be graduates.

For someone who has come straight out of school or even A-levels, and worked for two years - £20k isn't bad especially with those benefits.

It isn't advertised as a starting job MsDeedles.

I'm obviously very out of touch .

I wonder how much the salaries of the chief executives of those companies have gone up over the years?

It looks OK if the job wasn't in London, it does look like they have listed every single task, whereas some jobs would not but still expect you to do all this.

I'm job-hunting at the moment in London and this salary is average at the moment for this kind of job, though of course if it was at a bigger company the pay would be more.

Yep, elephantspoo.

Which is why a purely market economy, which relies entirely on the mechanisms you describe, would be shit to live in. It's about the price of everything and value of none.

In an actual nation, of people living together in a society, there are social and ethical ends as well as monetary ones. Which ever flavour of economy you choose, it's a means to those ends. Where an economy doesn't serve the need of the nation, it gets steered and curbed till it does - eg with monopolies regulation, to prevent the free market economy reaching its natural conclusion of monopoly.

The individuals who do best financially in a partially free economy are those who value their own labour according to purely monetary and utility arguments, and other people's labour according to social and public good arguments.

Otherwise, under value-based pricing, they'd have to sign their house over to the paramedic and nurse who save their toddler's life...

It is quite common but I agree exploitative.

Looks a pretty bloody easy job - not onerous in the slightest.

I do think they are a bit OTT asking for 2 years' experience and yes the earnings are fairly low, however I don't see that it particularly warrants a high salary. It's a very basic job.

To be honest mintyy this type of admin role has only progressed minimally in terms of salary band levels. In the mid-1990s I was in this generic "junior office admin manager" type role and the salary has not shifted since those times.

The low salary could be based on the turnover of people who come and go, making it perceived as a replaceable job.

That said, if you are in a role, it looks better on your CV to show you are currently employed and using up to date skills and software. It could become a starting point to re-purpose skills in a different role or company.

The list of job tasks is presumably just a complete round up of anything likely to crop up, rather than the person having to do all that, every day.

I wouldn't apply for that job on principle even if I was desperate, which I'm not. The person who posted the ad is illiterate, and that bodes very ill indeed.