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?

I think it depends on your motivation, your natural talents, making specific choices before responsibilities kick in and a good old dollop of luck.

I'm 26, no degree and earn £130k. My job also pays all my living expenses. It isn't a forever job though, so I run a couple of businesses on the side too. My home is in the Midlands but I travel all over.

I’ve just looked p average wage for my city and it’s really low. Over 6k lower than the national average.

I’m fortunate. I earn a wee bit more than national average part time.

I do have a degree but lucked out 10+ years ago when I got made redundant from a shitty job and managed to find a good one. You never know why’s ahead of you so don’t give up hope

what do you do unsuspecteditem, if you don't mind me asking? thats a fortune, at any age!

ssd I'm a Nanny and yes, its a lot. I'm very lucky, though I did work hard to get to this level, but I'm lucky to have been able to do the work, if that makes sense.

ssd Hahaha I've been dying to write a stupid post like that for ages! Maybe we should start a 'My imaginary life' thread!

A nanny? On £130k?! Bloody hell I wish I liked kids more!

I think we all need to retrain to be nannies! Though I’ve known a couple and they definitely haven’t been on £130k. Maybe late teens/ early 20’s!

Double the national average, I live and work I Surrey but there are well paying jobs everywhere.

wow, a nanny earns that amount

hollowtree , I could write loads for my imaginary life!

I live in London so living costs are more. Before I became a sahm I earned £30k. That was about the norm for the people I know. My dd's father earns over £150k now. When we met he was on £35k and I earned a lot less, working part time on minimum wage. This was before dd was born and we were very comfortable, not struggling. We rented a small flat but we were happy there. I can't say the extra money made us any happier at all. Quite the opposite actually. Not the money's fault but the stress of his job and my unhappiness at being a sahm. I've been poor, properly poor and not being able to afford food was far worse of course.

Are you Prince George’s nanny?

apparently the royal family dont pay well....

I say its a middle eastern family and you are on call 24/7?

either that or its a typo and you are on £13k?

The highest I've ever earned is just over 20k, although I wasn't a manager I had some specialist skills. I was made redundant years ago and after a period of ill. health will be lucky to get a job earning much more than NMW. I just never had the nack for getting up the ladder.

think a lot of posters here are telling us about they or someone they know who started off as an office girl or as an apprentice and worked their way up to management and now earn great money....IMO those days are gone.

I disagree, my daughter is doing this now having started in an entry level admin role; she's worked hard and made good decisions. In the organisation I work in young people can come in at entry level on around 16k and there is a development structure. I just took a young man from another dept into my team and he's now on £35k at 29. Lots of young people in the organisation have moved into project management or training or supervisory roles and are earning above the average salary.

Yeah, it’s true in IT that younger people tend to have a lot more qualifications these days but I feel as a sector it’s pretty meritocratic and a lot of people my age (around 40) have very few qualifications and worked their way up.

Wow I so missed the ability to work this one out. Some of these salaries are so high!!! I'm Oxbridge but ex teacher looking at jobs just over minimum wage....!!! I was clueless about careers and salaries and hope to research mumsnet fully before advising my children!!

@Cherrycokewinning The average earning for a couple of years post qualified is twice that treacle, so you’re looking at a pretty severe outlier where you live

Sorry, I didn't see your reply to me earlier. Yes, where I am has, as far as I know, the lowest salaries in general in the UK. I did a quick check earlier on some websites and apparently the average salary here for a qualified chartered accountant is around £30k (but much less for a newly qualified one, obviously) and for a solicitor it is around £28k.

As for not being able to progress within your company, it depends entirely on being lucky enough to get into a company that offers training etc, or the opportunity to expand on your skills. When I left university I took an entry level job with a huge company, the sort that there was stiff competition to get into and people were jealous that I had got through. But as it happened it was a huge mistake. In the ten years that I worked there, I never once was allowed to attend any sort of training (despite having been told at interview that they had a 'world class training programme' whatever that meant ). You were only allowed to apply for promotion within the company if your manager agreed to allow you to, and anyone who worked in one of the busier parts of the business simply wasn't allowed to. You were not allowed to take on extra duties to gain experience (and wouldn't have had the time to anyway) because that was deemed to be getting ideas above your station. And our contract was so controlling that we were not allowed to do voluntary work outside of our paid employment without permission (again, permission was rarely given) and the hours were so long that home study or nightclasses were impossible because you just wouldn't have had enough hours available to attend class. As a result, I was stuck there for ten years because I had more or less nothing to put on my CV beyond some experience doing a very specific set of duties. And since the company refused to give references of any sort, I couldn't even prove that I had done that. Almost every single employee was bored and miserable.

I am in my 40s and have only now, after 20 years, and several different employers, found a job that actually allows staff to attend training and encourages us to build up our skills. Where I live, it is incredibly unusual. They don't need to, because they have got dozens of overqualified candidates for each job, sometimes begging to be allowed to work for less than everyone else if it will secure the job for them.

I earn over the national average, but only by a bit.

I'm a nurse, many years qualified. I had what amounted to a pay cut for a few years as a top band 5 and no pay rise but I'm a Band 6 now so have scope to earn up to £35 grand with yearly incremental rises.

I'm not an ambitious nurse and love clinical work so I am unlikely to go any higher.

Pay for newly qualified nurses is awful, it's no surprise nurses leave.

It certainly seems from the thread that on the whole if you have training and qualifications which most people do nto have wages can be higher. I suppose it's all about supply and demand and some luck of course.

I earn over it but I doubt I am ever going to earn a fortune despite being in one of the “professions”. It’s not the be all and end all though is it x

Spot on @treaclesoda

treaclesoda that sounds like a long list of excuses to me. Surely if a company was offering a world class training programme you'd explore that in detail at the interview stage as a graduate joining the firm? You wouldn't just join with no career development plan surely?

charlie it wasn't a graduate programme, they didn't do a graduate programme.

But frankly I had never heard of a career development plan at that age. It certainly was never mentioned at school or by the university career department. And since I didn't know anyone who worked in any type of professional job that could give me advice, I just followed the general advice which was to get a job and work hard.

And when, after a few weeks I did approach my manager to ask when my training started I got taken into his office, the door was shut behind me and he sat me down and asked 'who do you think you are?' The HR department were sympathetic but their hands were tied. They saw it a lot.

Yes YABU.

1. Why does the fact others can earn it make you feel like you can't rather than you can? Look for clues about how they did it and make a plan.
2. It is the gap between what you earn and cost of living that matters rather than wage. London is more expensive than other places so it may be you are better off in disposable income than others on the average wage.
3. Why waste your one wild and precious life being depressed about it? Either focus on being grateful for what you have which is more than most people on this planet, or make a plan to change it. Or both.