To feel depressed that I’ve never and probably will never earn the National Average wage?

[Summerandgin]

As title.

I saw that the national average wage in the UK is £28,000. I have never and probably will never earn £28,000. The highest I’ve earnt is £25,000.

I can understand in London and surrounding areas for this to be an achievable wage, but it is a depressing thought that where I am in the country, I would say the average would be about 21-22k and only really professionals earn the national average +.

AIBU to be depressed about this? And to wonder what sort of job I’d have to do to earn that? I am fairly well educated with good GCSE’s , A-Levels and a Degree but my degree is worthless and I bitterly regret doing the subject I did (in fact I regret doing a degree at all) All I’ve ever ended up doing after graduating are essentially mid level admin roles.

Do YOU earn the national average? And if so, where abouts in the country are you?

Any professional should earn more than £25k. My first job after graduating paid £21k in 2002 and that was admin for the council

But that's not the reality.

Have a look at what a new nurse is paid.

My first job was in London a paralegal. £16,000. I had 3 degrees and was looking to qualify as a solicitor.

Well bully for you with your admin job and watch the your gave might stay that way when the wind changes.

*face not gave

I'm in Herts and have just started a new job for £60k. No degree, just luckily found something I really wanted to do when I was younger and worked my bum off. Have moved jobs a few times and got a pay rise each time. I work in a field that few people want to, and it's really paid off. I now have 17yrs experience in one area.

I don't even earn £20 k sadly

The link is interesting and shows that I earn above average for all the country except 2 London boroughs and a place called Copeland which looks like THE place to live.

However to get to my not very inspiring £40k salary I have had to make sacrifices, including only taking a very short maternity leave (before taking 9-12 months became the norm) working 10+ hour days and studying in the evenings.

Plus I live in one of the higher areas for the weekly wage so it's not spectacular. Average starter home here would not leave you change from £400k

It really depends what industry you're in.

By sheer fluke after university I ended up in the Financial sector after fluffing a ridiculously cut throat Apprentice style 24 hr interview at Fenwicks ( which is probably a now defunct department store) and decided that after I got my Financial Services offer I couldn't be bothered to do a powerpoint presentation for British Gas.

Luckily for me financial services pays well and I got into project work which suits me and means I should always be able to get a job of some description somewhere. I work 4 days per week and my overall salary is just under higher tax rate band. It does require extra hours on occasion and a bit of travel ( am up at 5am tomorrow for the red eye flight ), but no job is perfect.

I do find it very humbling when I think about what I earn compared to a nurse or paramedic. I think we have our priorities very skewed.

Never say never. I've only been out of uni two years and I'm at that wage. I didn't think it was a particularly high wage!

@Whatevszz definitely accountancy and engineering in Scotland. I've went from £12k starting trainee salary to £35k in 8yrs (engineering), there is a huge skills shortage and most engineering firms I'm aware of are booming and crying out for staff. You can shunt about the industry in the central belt / fife quite a bit too if you don't have family connections- I've moved a couple of times but fully intend to do this properly when my kids are grown!

Meant to say I'm in Scotland, and I'm a graduate engineer.

rejoiner
Copeland is a bit odd : there is only one major employer - Sellafield

I am similar to you op except I am older than you. I have a good degree and a masters but in pretty useless subjects. I earn just over 20k and live in the nw. I came out of uni and had good qualifications but no experience. I bummed about in a dead end job then started working in a uni at 27 in admin type roles. I have struggled to move up due to the nature of my job which means I don't have much responsibility although I am trying to get more experience. I bitterly regret fucking around after uni. I never knew what I wanted to do as a career. However I love my job and the people that I work with so feel lucky in that respect.

The median (half above, half below) of taxpayers is around £19,500

And then that gets more confused when you start looking at full time vs part time etc.

kalapattar
The £19500 is for all taxpayers - as per HMRC - it takes no account of hours worked or gender

My salary is £40k but with bonus & overtime I earn £50k plus. I'm in the North West but I work from home. Not sure what the definition of "professional" is, If provably describe my role as technical rather than professional.

You’re only 29 op? I’m not sure what you want from this thread but I don’t understand the hand wringing - you’re young, degree educated, why can’t you come up with a plan to boost earnings if that’s your main goal?

Well I earn 14000 based on a 40 hour week. I work on a shift pattern that covers 375 days of the year 24 hours a day. There is no additional shift allowance. 6.72 per hour.
I have been back to college and have 2 level 3 btec extended diplomas as well as several industry based qualifications.t
it's taken me to be 45 to get the quals/UCAS points for university but I cannot afford to go, have big commitments making time to study hard let alone when you consider my shift pattern. And a degree won't do anything for me in my current industry anyway which is where my experience is.
One major plus is I love my job though.

Earning anything like the figures mentioned here is nothing but pure fantasy for me but I do enjoy my job and hold onto thst fact.

There are plenty of areas in the country where people earn under £20k full time, and where even "professionals" don't earn the £28k average wage. In my area, we have no major employers, no head offices, no govt/quango offices - it's all just a random mix of small employers besides small branches of national firms. That means wages are pitifully low. Around here, teachers and nurses are the ones who live in the "nice" areas as they're the higher earners! The other week an agency sent through details of a qualified accountant looking for work (I have an accountancy practice) with an "expected salary" of just £28.5k - that's for a qualified chartered accountant! The disparity between areas of the country is awful and it just makes the earnings statistics completely meaningless.

Both DH have degrees, I also have a couple of post grad degrees and a professional diploma. He earns just under the NAW, I earn above it, but since I am self-employed, my income can go up and down depending on a lot of things: how much work is coming (chances are that Brexit will affect it in a negative way), how healthy I am so that I can go out and work, how the family circumstances are (we have young DC that need childcare/wrap around childcare). We live in Scotland.

I'm 24 and just graduated in summer from a top 20 uni in the Midlands with first class honours. It took me 5 years to do a four year degree programme as I had to take a year out due to severe ill-health. I moved back to my home city in the NW, started a job within 1 month of my graduation in my sector and it's a job that I needed my degree to do at the request of the hiring employer, but a job that people who have been there a long time don't necessarily have my degree, because of the oversupply of graduates from my degree subject. I only earn £15,400, which I think is poor given my educational background, but the team I'm in has a clear structure for progression and I have seen that people do move up quickly if they want to, although I plan to do a post-graduate professional qualification in a few years post-children to really go into the profession that I want (same sector), and hope to make significantly more money later down the line. However it will be a long-time coming, but given the nature of the sector and role, I have decided to have our child(ren?) first rather than break up my future ideal job with periods of long mat leave which given the nature of the role could be detrimental. It's a gamble and the profession I want to enter is notoriously difficult to enter at all, but all I can do is try my best , and be realistic that if I don't make it, I will have back-up options given my good education. I'm pregnant now and intending to go back part-time once baby is born in summer.

On that link someone shared, the average in my city is £500 a week. I only earn about £300 a week.

How does your wage compare locally though OP? Comparing to a national wage is a big meaningless especially if you don’t live in London or the southeast. Fwiw I earn £30k/pa for 3 days a week (50k Full time) i live in London though so I don’t feel well off.

Ooops, both DH and I

The average salary where I live is £23k and that's for "professionals". I earn just over £27k - I only have GCSE results which are average - didn't do A Levels or Degrees. When I finished school I went straight into work, I didn't bother with further education as quite honestly, I didn't know what I wanted to do.

If I went for the job I have now, I know I wouldn't stand a chance due to my lack of "education". It's pretty much standard now to require applicants to have degrees relating to our work or relevant work experience (which is unlikely). I just sort of got lucky.

A lot of the people I know who went to uni and did degrees are now either stuck in rubbish low paying jobs or can't even find work which is ridiculous!

I retrain at 27 doing a Masters in a field not related to my degree. I had save every penny for a year to pay for it + took a loan so I could take the year out and do it FT.

In the end, I didn't get a job related to my masters (nor my degree), just took any job because at this point I needed to work. I then applied for a better one and a year and baby later, moved and applied for yet another job, and another 2 years later, each time increasing my earning. I've been with the latter since, promoted 3 times, and mid-40s, earn more than double the average.

I don't understand why you think that at 29, your chance of a good income is doomed. Remember that you are likely to be working until your late 60s, so you still have a long time to go.

I earn 53k in a professional job. Spent 7 years at Uni though. Live in SE so living costs high, although could move elsewhere with similar wage.

@Forestfrump
Well I earn 14000 based on a 40 hour week. I work on a shift pattern that covers 375 days of the year 24 hours a day. There is no additional shift allowance. 6.72 per hour.
Your employer is breaking the law.
www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates
£7.50 is the legal minimum