To wonder why my job is so low paid and feel frustrated by it?

[eggsontoast9]

I’m a nursery nurse and I earn £8.72 an hour (minimum wage for over 25’s, I’m 26).
I’ve been in this job for the last three years and do enjoy it apart from the odd day but I’ve always wondered why it’s so low paid. It’s a hard job. I know a lot of people assume we just sit on our bums all day and play with children but that’s really not the case. I work in the baby unit and we can have anywhere up to 15 babies on a busy day, which in itself is bloody hard work. We have to deal with sick, poo, unhappy/unwell children, difficult parents etc. We have to complete paperwork now, normally whilst looking after the children because we’re short staffed and can’t always have time away from the room. We work long hours not because we want to but because we have to as the wages are so low (I work 7:30-6:00 four days a week and 7:30-5:00 another day). Holidays aren’t very generous. I guess the only bonus is we have weekends off unless we have training. I suppose it’s the same as health care jobs such as care assistants.

I like the job and work with a good team but can’t see myself staying here long term just because of the money which is a shame as it’s really hard to find a job that you enjoy sometimes. I was speaking to my younger cousin who’s 18 and she told me she’s just started a job in Asda earning £9.20 an hour and whilst I’m extremely happy for her and proud of her, it has made me realise my job is incredibly low paid and not very well respected in terms of how hard we all work. Before anyone jumps on me, I’m not saying my cousin shouldn’t earn that amount as I appreciate working in a supermarket is hard work to and any job should be paid a fair wage.

What is more frustrating is that we have to complete training each year and work towards gaining qualifications yet our wages are based on our age, so IMO there isn’t any progression available.

AIBU?

@FortunesFave

the thing is op you have job satisfaction that goes a long way

Not when you want a nice holiday it doesn't! Or to send your child to ballet or horse riding lessons!

Most working parents on average or above incomes can't afford holidays, ballet lessons and horse riding......

[quote eggsontoast9]@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland hmm, I'm not sure. I wouldn't class myself as particularly clever and I didn't do very well in school. I have been meaning to resit GCSE's in my local college but it's finding the time and £££ (£150 per course)[/quote]
Maths and English courses (Functional Skills and GCSE) are now funded directly by the government for any adults who don’t already have a GCSE. You should not be charged anything.

My suggestion would be to look out for NVQ assessor positions in local colleges/training providers. Many will let you do your assessor qualification on the job assuming you have sufficient industry experience. From there I would consider a teaching qual so you could teach childcare students. This is because lecturing at college is generally better paid than assessing.

Good luck for the future.

However it is routinely applied to care jobs, as ahh well at least you've got job satisfaction
The myth of vocation to underpay in care and education and yes it disproportionately affects women

YANBU- nursery nurses (overwhelmingly women) are very low paid and it’s awful. My Mum was a TA for years and they’re not much better off. It’s very unfair when it’s such hard work.

Could you retrain as a teacher maybe? That way you’d still get to be with children but receive better pay.

Its not just because of skill level, as others have said, its cultural misogyny. Doesn't take much skill to be a labourer or a scaffolder or a hgv driver (once you've got the licence you can do it even though you might be a terrible driver!). But yet all these roles are paid more because men do them. If no one cared for our children, the world would grind to a halt. No one recogises good childcare for what it is because women (largely) do it and so it is just expected that they are 'naturally caring' and 'love babies'. It should be considered one of the most important jobs in modern society and compensated accordingly.

Are there any hospital child care jobs in your area?
That may well be paid more?

If you pick a career with a low entry threshold (eg minimal experience and qualifications required) and it's one where lots of people want to do it then you will get paid less. The supply of labour is relatively high compared to demand.

Contrast that with working on an oil rig or computer programming.

There are actually quite a few jobs which are enjoyable with great hours and well paid it's just people aren't initially attracted to them.

My general career advice is 1) Pick an industry which is growing, rather than shrinking or is mature. 2) Pick a growing company.

I can guarantee if you go and work in drones, ai, robotics, offshore wind or machine learning you will earn far far more in future and be far happier than working in car making, traditional banking and so on.

Nursery imbued safety and security in my dc, with secure attachments, good boundaries, discussion, exploring activities and routine. We also felt they taught us how to parent (as clueless newbies to parenting) and we used to adopt their strategies all the time ('use your words' etc). We feel extremely lucky to have encountered the nursery team we did. We sometimes see one of the workers around our town and we always remark to each other how important those nursery workers have been to our children's future happiness and success. You are very underpaid OP, that's shocking. And surely discriminatory to be paid effectively by age?

@SisyphusDad

Supply and demand. You are a commodity. There are enough people willing to do the job at the minimum wage that employers don't need to pay any more.

A rule that holds true for everyone except MPs and CEOs.

Yes, this. Wages are determined purely through supply and demand. While there's excess supply of people wanted to work in childcare, wages will stay low. As there are few barriers to entry (in terms of qualifications required to start working in childcare), there is a vast supply of people.

I'm not denying it's very hard work, I couldn't do it. But that's not how the economic wage curve works.

@Skipsurvey

Care assistants are also on the minimum wage. the thing is op you have job satisfaction. that goes a long way

Not if you can barely cover the bills and don’t have a pension. Lack of job satisfaction is why retention in this sector is so poor,

But I guess it’s justified when the career progression and long term financial security of other workers rests on the work (read: exploitation) of these devalued, underqualified and underpaid young women (about £4.50 an hour for the female apprentices who flood the profession in droves and leave soon after).

The early years sector in England is not fit for purpose. This is obvious to anyone who reflects on it seriously.

Sadly there are so many others of underfunding and social neglect that it’s hard to know where to begin.

My nanny earns £35k a year. Maybe consider a job change. Typical nanny pay is £12ph after tax.

DD was a nursery nurse. Then a nanny for a couple of years. Couldn't see a career progression, so trained as a nurse. Not a fantastic salary to start with, but real opportunities for further training and promotions. Best move she made.

op your position is far more well respected than you realise.

I agree with you OP as the pay doesn’t reflect the skill set and hard work needed to do the job. TA jobs are the same. They have demanding performance management targets in my school including a shared responsibility for some areas of class data, need special needs training etc and many are required to cover classes at short notice which is now teaching (but not to plan the lesson.) When covering my TA friend said she only gets paid £1 an hour more than her normal TA wage. She is teaching maths, English etc following the school’s planning. Completely insulting.

Early years childcare should be subsidised by the government, as it is in many other countries.

example of structural misogyny.

Absolutely agree. This is made worse by the steady stream of applicants keen to work with babies.

Roles like technology are much better paid for arguably easier work. I encourage anyone I meet to find out mire about roles where their are shortages. Sadly there is a lot of resistance. People tend to stick with what they know about.

Be bold, be brave.

Unfortunately, it’s just not valued very much in our society and is generally seen as something that low achieving girls can go into at school as it ‘doesn’t matter’ that their grades are low.

I can’t see that changing at any time soon either.

Direct care job are never going to be well paid because it involves very little decision making. You just follow the rules you've been told to and even if you make a mistake, it's likely that your boss would be the one accountable.

Saying that, I totally agree that the caring sector is very much underpay compared to other jobs as supermarket workers. Sadly, the latter is in an industry of profit, the former isn't.

YANBU. I love my 2 children’s nursery and always feel sad about how much nursery staff are paid for the incredible work you do

Nursery is the business. Is not subsidized by Government. Owners pay, what they can afford to pay business afloat. Paying wages are the most expensive part of the business and in can't be reduced, as is children/staff ration has to be kept. Asda is huge employer and can afford to pay more. Small businesses like nurseries can't do it. Sad, but true.

It should be considered one of the most important jobs in modern society and compensated accordingly.

How do you propose to make that happen? What level of annual compensation do you consider appropriate for ‘the most important jobs in modern society’? Would you pay eg £2k per year more in tax to fund a government subsidy of high wages for childcare workers?

I love my 2 children’s nursery and always feel sad about how much nursery staff are paid for the incredible work you do

But would you pay eg 25% higher fees to make it happen? It’s easy to wring your hands and make sympathetic statements but as a user of the service provided by people you think are underpaid, what would you do about it?

Or do you expect ‘the government’, ie other people, to pay more tax to make it happen? Would you happily pay more tax (see example above)?

My sisters a nursery nurse, she had to do two years at college to get her qualification. She’s always doing courses as well. The job she’s in is run by a charity, it’s quite good pay, not amazing but better than private run nurseries. She refuses point blank to work in a private nursery because of crap pay and some are very badly run. I think your prob better getting into a council nursery or the hospital? The pay might be a bit better for you, but these jobs are hard to come by. I think you need to work in the bank before your offered a job. I might be wrong x

@Canyousewcushions yes I understand nursery nurses need NVQ to a certain level but I guess it’s also not seen as a hard qualification to get.

If 99% of people pass then it’s not difficult and again a supply and demand. If most of the population could pass the course it’s not ever going to be well paid.

If we up the pay to £15 an hour and more people do the training pushing out mediocre staff and it becomes only the best the best can be nursery workers. Great news for parents but then they have to pay more and there is less people in these positions who probably actually love the job and only doing it for the money.

It’s hard as I think most people should be paid more but if you look at how the economy works it just pushes up the cost of living like Switzerland.

Unless becoming a nursery nurse is harder and only a certain % of people in the country can do the job it’s never going to be better paid.

but the patriarchal system is institutionally discriminatory to women in terms of status and pay

It’s nothing to do with the mythical patriarchy and everything to do with supply + demand and levels of taxation.

If you reduce the wages of firemen and police officers to that of nursery nurses, the nobody would put fires out anymore. Because enough people are willing to risk getting weed on for £9 and hour but few would risk fatal smoke inhalation or getting assaulted with a broken bottle for £9 an hour.

People, men and women, leave the teaching profession in droves because it doesn’t offer a decent enough deal. And to counter the patriarchy statement again, primary and secondary are basically paid the same. Except sometimes for science/maths/language teachers - who are offered more cans but STILL struggle to recruit .... supply and demand.

I’d like to see all public workers paid more, but when it comes to voting time, 70-80% of the time, people vote against tax hikes to pay for it. They vote (or at least this is the perception) to keep their daily Costa Coffee and against that £3 going in the public purse for better schools, better wages, better services etc.

Rather than falling back on this mythical patriarchy, better to examine our own life choices and those of our friends and family.

Women’s work. Always valued at a fraction of what men traditionally do because what they do is ‘really important’.