To be depressed at low level of wages?

[abacucat]

I am looking for a new job and wages where I live have fallen to what people used to be paid 10 plus years ago. Even qualified social worker jobs are starting at £24,000. I am not a qualified social worker by the way, just an example. But there are so many jobs asking for a high level of skills and experience, but a low level of pay. And the few jobs paying anywhere approaching decent wages, are inundated with candidates.

Vote for a socialist government?

I totally agree. In the past couple years on MN I’ve said that UK wages were/are absolute crap and people have responded along the lines of “People should be happy with what they’ve got.” Etc. No freaking way. Wages in the UK need to increase by at least 50% to bring them up to the (bottom) standard of the rest of the westernized world.

Hi, I'm low paid manual worker. And studying law degree to better myself. I don't think I want to be a solicitor as I can't work long hours, due to having 2 children and one with special needs. However can anyone advise me of alternative legal career I could go for? Max about 30 hrs week. Is there any caring law based jobs, or charity work. Or civil service work a law degree can go towards? I like helping people and I'd also like to earn above £18,000 a year more like 30k. Does this sound an impossible ask? Sorry to be so vague. I'm in my late thirties BTW.

I was a teacher. My salary was cut, then cut again. They couldn’t cut any further so instead they had two lots of redundancies and those jobs were divided up and added to the workload of the remaining staff. Then they decided to keep the hourly wage the same but only pay for classroom hours, and all prep/marking had to be done unpaid in your own time. So effectively the salary was halved because half of the hours were unpaid.

Loads of teachers left for other jobs. The more cuts there were, the easier it was to find another job that paid the same. By the time I left to have DC, teachers were leaving for an equivalent salary as a checkout assistant. They were being replaced by an army of min wage TAs under the supervision of one qualified teacher.

Having said that, people are still needed to do all these low paid jobs so not all people can be well paid. People are still needed to do all these lower skilled jobs. That's not the same as saying they need to be low paid. When I started work, CEOs were paid about 25 times the average salary, now it's into the hundreds.

All through history, there has a balance with people at the top giving those below them just enough money to stop them rebelling. Now, for whatever reason, they don't need to give people quite as much. And we have the spectacle of people following the moneyed lifestyles of clebs and being "uplifted" by royal weddings where cost of the bride's dress alone would pay the salary of a median wage worker for 10 years. The excesses of the Tudor court don't seem a whole world away.

Dint "The excesses of the Tudor court don't seem a whole world away."

agree.

@Gaspodethetalkingdog, honestly probably not even though xenophobes want it to be true. Most immigrants are highly skilled and are likely to be in jobs like engineering, medicine, etc.

The thing is, these jobs have not kept pace with the cost of living. The government knows this, but has done a brilliant job of whipping up ire towards low-income people. People have really bought into the idea that earning a low-wage, no matter how vital the service you are offering, is indicative of moral and personal failure and deserves to be punished. So the tax credits are now gone in a lot of places. Replaced with UC, which is punitive. And yet the hatred so many still bear towards those being moved onto these, despite being in even FT work, is astonishing.

As long as sheeple continue to fall for this Victorian ideology, that not earning a 'good' wage (despite the fact that it's not even being offered even for many skilled professions) is your fault and you should be grateful for any scraps thrown your way from Master's table, then low wages (and continued erosion of employment rights) will continue.

Because what these bloated execs and fat cats and their cronies in government want is not the best for the country, but a return to the feudalism with as few people holding the majority of the wealth and the rest in thrall to them.

Yep, even in hot sectors like software engineering, starting salaries have barely moved from 18 years ago when I started.

House prices in the same area are 500% higher.

I despair. Young people should be out organising rent strikes and noone should be sucked into buying a house at these prices with stupid schemes like help to buy. Knock the bottom rung away by not participating and let's see how fast and how far it'll fall. I say that as someone whos notional 'wealth' would be decimated by that - but it'd be well worth it to see fairness. Otherwise we will end up with an entirely disenfranchised country.

Exactly, Milky. Central government cut council funding to the bone. So all the cost of society has been undermined. But people keep voting for it!

Young people should be out organising rent strikes and noone should be sucked into buying a house at these prices with stupid schemes like help to buy.

Not going to have time working 60+ hours/week just to keep the food on the table. Very, very clever of the government.

This is part of the reason why the high street is failing. Because some have just not got the money to spend. Not all of it is down to internet shopping. This is just a handy hook to hang the hat of excuses on.

@LegoAdventCalendar

exactly.

I get 35k for a basic admin role. Started 6 years ago on 20k with progressive yearly payrises and one band increase. I thank my lucky stars everyday but am acutely aware that if anything was to happen to my job the equivalent would be minimum wage.

Totally agree. I was working as a junior solicitor 25 years ago earning £30k plus pension etc. A similar job now you might earn £35k max. And yet house prices have gone up x5.

Meanwhile the few at the top, CEOs are earning absolutely vast sums, whilst paying their employees minimum wage.

There needs to be a maximum multiplier in place so for eg the highest earner in a company cannot earn more than x25 the lowest paid earners. So if the CEOs wages rise, so do everyone else's.

People should most definitely be marching in the streets and protesting at the shocking disparity and inequality between those at the top and bottom.

I'm not a Marxist but I think the phrase "Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains" is sadly very apt (again) these days.

If you exclude the top 10% of earners then the UK average wage is actually £13k.

Tax credits exist to support and subsidise the firms paying subsistence wages whilst making huge profits and rewarding execs and shareholders very generously.

The wealth divide is greater than it's ever been, sales of luxury goods and high end cars etc are booming compared to the rest of the economy.

Unlimited, unskilled immigration also undoubtedly plays it's part in enabling the situation we now have.

LegoAdventCalendar - Exactly the government and their bosses the banks have got us right where they want us... a nation of obedient, compliant debt slave worker drones.

Tax credits exist to support and subsidise the firms paying subsistence wages whilst making huge profits and rewarding execs and shareholders very generously.

Only now they're being phased out and already have in many councils.

The cost of living is also very high!

On paper I earn ok wages (nowhere near high by Mumsnet standards ). I budget well. I have one child. Yet every month I find myself overdrawn.

I work with families and I have no idea how they cope. Most of them are unemployed. Trying to get onto universal credit is fucking hard. You can only make an application online in which case you have to be able to access a computer and the internet. You need to be able to afford a mobile phone as this is your reference number and contact with them. You have to prove you are looking for work if not you are sanctioned and will not get benefits. You also have to find money to travel to the job centre. You wait at least 5 weeks for your benefits to come through in most cases it’s way longer than this. By the time families are waiting they are getting into arrears with electric and gas companies or borrowing money from loan sharks. They are relying on food banks and they are eventually get evicted by landlords who do not wish to wait for DWP to pull their finger out their arse.

Torie bastards are taxing and punishing the poor whilst these massive corporations are dodging taxes.

Sorry for rant

Leo there's a thread in Active just now featuring a woman who has applied for UC and 90% of the responses are heaping scorn on her. I really feel for people as this is rolled out more and more but it would appear that the majority of people have fallen for the government's programme of propaganda hook, line and sinker.

I agree op. I'm a sahm at the moment. My last job was ten years ago. Looking at the current job market, the wages for the same job are exactly the same as ten years ago. Meanwhile the house I bought ten years ago has more than doubled in value.

jemihap "If you exclude the top 10% of earners then the UK average wage is actually £13k."

thanks for that. I always thought the average was too high but clearly too tired and overworked to think why

Apparently the programme is more than fair and generous by allowing claimants to borrow an advance on the payments and thus start out with debt (but it's interest-free!) and in arrears.

@Lego Poor women. It’s amazing how people believe the bullshit that they are told, that anyone actually wants to be on any benefit at all.