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?

At sea -yes the average figure is brought up by the top 5% with massive salaries. That said don't be too envious of those on 30,000 remember they pay more tax and won't get any benefits so in terms of disposable income they are probably no better off than you.

£30k & pretty average (accounting low level). Rent £1400 for a not even average 3 bed house so £16,800 goes on that alone - with less than 24k take home after tax etc it’s not loads.

Higher salaries in the south but way higher average living costs mean less actual money in reality. Retaining with AAT if accounting is something that interests you would get you that kind of salary pretty quickly. Not a particularly inspiring job though tbh!

I might have known a bunch of posters would come on here and say THEY earn WAY more than £30K!

Only on mumsnet!

@Ponoka7 Agreed. Where I live you can get a lovely 3 bed detached house, corner plot with open plan kitchen/dining room and the trendy bi-fold doors for between £175-200k, whereas down south something similar would be closer to £500k plus.

A 6+ bed mansion (and I do mean Mansion) round here is £600-750k, which in a London wouldn’t even buy you the house I described above.

NHS worker, my role FT earns 35k ish. Bear in mind that I reached the top of my band at age 35, so unless I want to go into NHS middle management or change career, I’ll never earn any more than I am doing now.

I earn 29k as a Homeless Support manager. My DP earns 36k as a design manager for an engineering company. Both have undergrad degrees and in early 30s living in the Midlands.

@user1493759849 it’s literally the title of the post; “who are you and how?”

Yes SE/ London drags it up I think. My admin assistant is on 28k and it’s her first job out of university.

I earn just under that for 24 hours a week (FTE would be £45K) I'm in senior PS administration.

Is it mean or median average? I suspect it is the mean, which means that the figure will be skewed by a small number of high earners, but given that FT NMW is £17k pa, £29.5k isn't masses above that.

And considering that many nurses, teachers, office workers, and lots of other jobs that are common across the country will earn around that amount, it seems a reasonable figure.

36k in Scotland in a specialist safety role this will hopefully go up soon as I've just finished my training. I'm mid 20s, I did go to uni for law though which helped.

Without getting too technical the average is not a good measure for things like wages (where the values are not normally distributed). As stated above the average salary gets pulled up by a relatively few people who earn massive amounts of money.
A more reliable indicator of what an ordinary person earns is the median (i.e. if you sorted all the salaries of every worker in money order and selected the middle earner) you would get something that is much more the ordinary salary. It's probably a few thousand less than the average.

I KNOW it's in the title, but it seems that the people claiming to be on MUCH higher salaries than £30K, seem to be saying that everyone they know is on the mid 5 figures, and seems aghast that anyone would think differently, and no-one they know is on a shitty salary.

I left my last secular job in 2003 earning £38K as a software developer. Living in the northwest, early 40’s. If that had been updated in line with the average earnings index, I would now be on £68K.

Instead I made a vocational career change and now earn just und;er £25K, but I get free accommodation with council tax, water, phone and broadband paid, which is worth several thousand more. I’m reminding myself I will have to pay these costs myself when I retire. I’m also able to let out my own house, which brings in another 9K.

Part time workers are irrelevant when talking about full time average pay. If you work fewer hours, of course you'll earn less. Yes, some people can't get as many hours as they'd like, but that's not the point of these surveys.

Just increased to 30k as a qualified firefighter. That's the most we can earn without promotion.

I don't think the majority of people earn less.

They must do, logically. If the average is £29500, no one working will be below say £10K , so £19500 under, but many people will be on way more than £19500 over. Many earn £50K plus. Some people are on £100K plus, a few are on millions. Therefore more than 50% must be on under £29500.

If you have 10 people and their average age is 29, and one of them is 103, then it's likely that the other 9 are well under 29.

Am in risk and compliance in financial industry and earn £40k full time, have worked hard to get up to this salary since finishing uni in 2000. I am working to hopefully achieve more, providing brexit doesn't fuck us up.

Bullshit about the SE pushing it up, it's all sector dependent. I'm in the SE, work as a Marketing Manager and earn less than that. My friend who is an account manager in PR far out-earns me

The easy way to find a definitive answer to your question is to find where the stat came from and look to see if it's the mean, median or mode average. Then you'll know for sure if it's a minority dragging up the average for everyone or if that's simply the most common salary.

*"I’ve just checked the average house price, which is just over £230,000"

That's were it puts it in perspective. Houses start from £50k (for one you don't have to do up) where i live.*

£50k! I couldn't even buy a garage for that here! Average house price in out street is £370k (victorian and georgian terrace)

I'm in East Anglia
I'm in commercial finance currently on £35k- should go up significantly when I pass my final exam at the end of the year- I should be able to double this salary with 5-7 years post qualification experience in my field. (I'm 31)
My partner is on just shy of £90k- he is a business development manager of an international logistics company. (he is 40)

The ‘average’ is probably hiked up because of how much the super-rich are earning. The majority are probably earning that and less.

We live in the South East, nearer the coast than London

My 24 yo son earns in excess of £40,000. He’s not academic, heleft school at 18 with BTecs and took an IT apprenticeship. He’s now qualified and doing very well.

My future DIL who he met at work followed a more traditional route, went to uni and then trained as an accountant. She is a similar age and earns £45,000 but her student loanrepayments mean she takes home a similar amount. However she has the potential to earn a lot more than him in the future. He will probably have to do further qualifications in the future if he wants to progress.

I earn about the average in the public sector. Worked previously in hospitality in management and had a higher income with potential to earn more but that came with a cost that wasn’t worth paying

All of you saying that figure is dragged up by high earners, it is not the mean.

The average used for salaries is the MEDIAN which means that if the majority of people earn low salaries, a small number of very high salaries will not increase the average.