29.5k earnings who are you and how?!

[AtSea1979]

BBC reports today say the average salary in the UK is £29,500.

I earn 12k but i’m part time (otherwise 18k). I live in the north. I can only dream about earning nearly 30k. I’ve thought about retraining but I wouldn’t know where to start as the job market seems so difficult.

AIBU to think the majority of people earn much less and it’s just the minority fat cats pulled that figure up?

I guess depends where you work, only couple of people in my office of 15 earn less than 30k.

2 x100k earners and 10 x 18K earners already make the average wage
of about 31.7k, so if this is how they do the average then your assumption is quite right.

I am more interested in the mode of salary bracket, does anyone know?

I'm in IT in the Midlands. I earn £46k.
£29k sounds about right for the average wage for me. I was on it a seven years ago. When I worked in the public sector it was almost impossible to get to that salary.

"I’ve thought about retraining but I wouldn’t know where to start as the job market seems so difficult.'"
OP, what do you do and what would you like to retrain as? Do you think the job market in your area is difficult in general or is it just for the type of work you would like to retrain for?

If you have transferable skills could you get into another business sector from where you could climb up into a more senior position?

Although £29.5k is now the average salary this is not a "fat cat" salary by any means. However, plenty of people are now on minimum wage too. I think, when MW was brought in, plenty of employers saw that as a way of cutting costs so, when positions became vacant, they recruited at a lower salary. It's become the norm in a lot of jobs where a professional qualification isn't required.

ONS is the best place to look if you want to do some further analysis/ look at regional trends etc.

The mode would be meaningless for this - mode salary I imagine would actually be the minimum wage as it is the most common.

www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2018

East midlands here. I earn well below average. I am on £8.40 an hour but costs around here are relatively lowand I get overtime and sleep in allowances on top of that that increases my income.

I have colleagues in more expensive parts of the country (Northants, Hertfordshire and Warwickshire) that earn around 17p an hour more than me so I am quite lucky 😫

I'm on £50k in my 30s. I left (a very shitty) school that put me off education after GCSEs. I took any job I could get. When I landed an office job at 18 I worked my arse off, unpaid overtime, going out of my way to learn everything about the business, etc. Admin in our team can start at £23k mind.

SE here (not London). My first job was around 28k, I’ve earned double that - own business - and currently on something slap bang in between, in a very lovely office job (flexible, lovely people, good perks).

Husband on six figures and doesn’t have any A levels. When i met him - aged 22ish - he was earning 27k working for a non profit. He refrained, took an internship type role at 18k as a business analyst, was bumped up to 27k after 6 months, then 38k a year after, next one was 46k and so on and so forth. He does now have to travel and works very hard, and he believes it’s much easier to walk into these things as a well spoken, attractive, middle class white male (and he feels guilty about it!!). But I think earning power can be boosted significantly if you have the privilege of being able to invest in retraining and re-inventing yourself.

People only look at the money but forget that high paid jobs can be extremely stressful and people burn out in them easily.

Not sure I would be able to do a routine job though, would probably go mad after a week of the same every day, every hour, every month.

As someone who spent ten years doing awful NMW jobs (barista, pizza delivery, factory work, shop floor retail, waitress, etc.) and now earns a ‘good salary’ in a professional career, I find this incredibly patronising. I’ve never worked as hard in my life or been as stressed as in some of those jobs. Pizza delivery for three years for example compromised my sanity at times due to being on a zero hour contract so having no say over my own schedule and therefore life, having no choice but to stay until 3am when I was due to finish at 8pm, having absolutely no rights or autonomy as if commands were met with anything other than jumping straight to the task (or coming in on your ‘day off’ because someone was sick) you’d simply not be given many hours the following week. Try living for a few weeks not knowing when or if you’ll be at work, one week working seventy hours and the next three, unable to financially plan because you had no idea what your income will be. Missing friends’ birthdays because you weren’t allowed to go home on time because it was busy, etc.

And even in contracted hours roles such as retail and supermarket checkout work the stress was unbearable at times, not so much because the work was difficult but a combination of it being mentally so boring the lack of stimulation was painful, being spoken to like shit by customers and treated like you must be an idiot, the life stress of trying to make ends meet on very low pay, the lack of agency over your work day.

I now work in mental health on £37k in a role with a lot of responsibility and risk management and it feels like a dream compared to the decade spent in those jobs, I’ve never been less stressed from work! It’s the sort of job people respond to with ‘wow, I couldn’t do that’ yet it’s a piece of cake in comparison to being stood on a factory conveyor belt for twelve hours per day tidying up iced lemon cakes.

People do ‘go mad’ from doing the exact same thing day in day out with no hope of anything different or mentally stimulating or rewarding tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. They just have to keep going. It’s not more easy for the people working on your local Tesco checkouts to sustain than it would be for you. They’re not a different breed of person with less need for intellectual stimulation.

So patronising.

@GammaStingRay I think there is an ideal middle ground, where you earn enough, have stability and enough mental stimulation. I too have a reasonably paid job which isn't too stressful or difficult.

It's noticeable though that directors and above are expected to have a whole new level of commitment - that is a trade off if you have enough anyway.

But totally with you, cannot imagine how stressful living hand to mouth on minimum wage would be, it's a whole new level of stress.

Occupational Therapist (OT) here and I’d earn 36 if I was full time. I started my training at 29 and the oldest person on the day we started the four year course was 50. Unfortunately it’s not so easy to get on the in-service courses now because of difficulties with funding & the lack of OT assistant jobs now available.

Also to that although I still love my job I no longer consider it particularly well paid. The NHS & local authorities are struggling through constant lack of resources, low morale, poor working environments, managing very difficult clinical decisions daily, etc,etc, etc. So I guess it doesn’t always seem that great?!

No, I have no idea what my friends earn either. I could have a rough guess at some that do jobs like care assistant (not very much), fire fighter and police officer (maybe somewhere between £25 and 30K each?) but I have absolutely no idea how much the finance managers, accountants, service engineers, self employed electricians, fencing contractors or bankers earn.

Same here, the only people i know what they earn are my sis, DH and my dad (retired but i know what his pension is - similar to my salary!!)

On another thread there was a debate regarding pay v responsibility and stress or mental load and there are a lot of people who think its very black and white and there is an absolute linear correlation between the 2. I think there are grey areas.
Im thinking about care workers, nurses, frontline police, firefighters and paramedics who have to deal with people dying, and incredibly stressful situations but are not known to have fantastic wages.
Similarly people working on comission, like estate agents. Soneone could sell an identical terrace 2 bed house in 1 part of the country for 47k and another part for 547k. Who worked harder/had more stress ?
In that line of thinking tv presenters and professional footballers must be the most hardworking with incredibly stressful jobs!

My DH has his own business, its not especially successful at the moment but his work and responsibilities are the same (the actual tangible work plus invoicing , paying bills, wages, pensions etc) whether he makes a 50k profit or a 5k loss.

Me and my hubbie, both degree educated aged 43, earn 20k, in government jobs in the south east. Most jobs... Shops, pubs, factories are all minimum wage.. About 12k. So I am surprised that the average isn't lower. I suppose they are quoting the mean not the median. After all there are many ways to calulate an average depending upon what you want it to show. (politics)

People only look at the money but forget that high paid jobs can be extremely stressful and people burn out in them easily.

I think there’s certainly some truth in this. That doesn’t mean everyone burns out but there’s generally a reason higher paid jobs are higher paid. My son will net about 65k this year as a 24 year old. He’s away from home for ten months, seen his girlfriend once in that time and workIng silly hours (33 hour shift) in appalling conditions (43 degrees without air conditioning or natural light). The work itself is about as high stress as it comes.
It’s not necessarily for everyone but allows high income at a young age, so he can invest and be secure when he starts thinking about weddings and babies. There are choices in life.

Anyone seen any radiographers on this thread? Thinking of retraining.

When I see stats like this I always think of maths lessons, mean, mode or median!

Think some teachers get 27k ish . And some social workers. Emphasis on the word some before I get flamed...

Teachers start on £22k and the mainscale goes to £37k. They can then move onto the upper payscale and earn more and the leadership scale if they get a leadership role.
They can also get TLRs in addition to basic salary for additional work and responsibilities.
The scales are higher in London.

Interesting divergence into stress - dh runs his own business, employs 12 people, he's been reasonably successful. He's been very generous with his employees - he values them. Why? Because he can rely on them to do their job properly, they have a unique set of skills and abilities which means he doesn't have to manage them so much and they can produce high quality work for clients. We have put money aside to pay the staff for 6 months in the event he can't continue - this reduces our stress but it's taken a while to get there. He suffers from stress if he is not in control - he had issues with his business partner and that was very difficult but it's not like that gnawing stress and exhaustion from working all the hours in a minimum wage job and still not being able to afford the bills.
He came from a relatively normal background - was the first kid in his comp to go to Oxbridge and he got there with hard work like everything he's achieved - hard work with a sprinkling of right time, right place and he's incredibly modest, people trust him - which I think is the key to a lot of his success and he tends to employ people like him - quietly confident with no hint of arrogance.

Anyone seen any radiographers on this thread? Thinking of retraining. My Mum was a radiographer - absolutely loved her job, retired now, worked with a great team.

I've read research saying that the biggest stress factor in jobs isn't the level of responsibility it's lack of control. Which makes sense to me. If you're very senior and are making decisions, by definition you have more control over what is happening. It can be stressful obviously, because you need to make the right decisions. But it's not the same sort of stress as sitting in Eg a call centre where your every conversation is recorded and monitored, everything is timed, you have daily statistics thrown at you and told that you need to fit in ten more calls tomorrow, you can't get up and take a breather, and you get shouted at all the time. Lack of control over your day to day life is a big stress factor and it tends to affect the poorly paid.

My most senior, highly paid friend says she has less stress as a director (in one of the big 4 accountancy firms) than as a new entrant because she has control and can delegate.

Also why nurses are often more stressed than hospital consultants, even though the consultants are the ones making the life and death decisions and shouldering the responsibility that goes with it.

28.5k plus bonus ( some years ) as a PA in the midlands. Mind you was on exact same salary in 2003 as a Recruitment Manager. Then realised I hated managing staff and my salary took a nosedive for 16 years

I'm a public sector lawyer, my FTE salary is just under £60k but I work 29 hours a week.

I've read research saying that the biggest stress factor in jobs isn't the level of responsibility it's lack of control
@isabellerossignol That totally ties in with what I have observed about dh - the lack of control when his business partner was causing problems and he could not resolve the issues - mind you being left to run the business alone was stressful too - having lots of balls in the air but he knew that pain was temporary - he'd step up and he has.