To ask for ‘normal average’ salaries?

[Mamacita191]

After seeing loads of posts recently about what people earn, I feel like it’s a completely different world to what I am living in. I live in the midlands and a good salary is 30-40k which is what most people comfortably sit at. I certain rarely see jobs advertised for £60k or more (even 6 figures which I’ve read is what some people make!). Even the jobs that people advise to go into such as lawyers and accountants in a good firm etc don’t make 3 figures as I’ve read on here.

Is it just me who thinks 30-40k is a normal salary that a lot of people sit comfortably at? Am I missing out on something?

@Iggly

It’s a shame an average wage isn’t enough to get by on in huge parts of the country with our epic housing and childcare costs.

On thé contrary it’s enough in ‘most’ of the country. That’s to say not London. Even in London it’s more than enough for a single person

@ViceLikeBlip

40k as experienced teacher with no extra responsibilities. Feels like a decent professional salary round here (Midlands) but i do often wonder just how much extra work/stress those mythical 100k+ London jobs really are....

I think a lot of them aren't necessarily more difficult but involve a lot of networking nonsense on the way up the ladder. Getting higher in my industry involves a lot of going to weekend conferences, monthly visits to clients to take them for lunch, corporate days out that involve things you may not enjoy like cricket and horse racing, and spending a lot of your personal time on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Comparison is the thief of joy, they say. It is just not worth doing. Even we London commercial lawyers who earn a fair bit we all have clients who earn masses more in business - who might make £20m when they sell a company and that kind of thing. There will always be someone with more money.

Also age is a factor with many professions. You start at 14 in a sense as I was putting off things you want to do to slog it out for the best GCSE results you can whilst others are going out to parties. You are just building up like a pyramid a career structure and you could tumble down the side at any time and only once you are up it a fair bit do you have any spare money. I started on £6250 as a trainee solicitor in 1983. I have worked full time ever since even when having babies (worked until I went into Labour, used 2 weeks - yes weeks not months - of annual leave to have the baby and then back full time). Plenty of city lawyers work all night fairly regularly without any extra pay. there is no over time. You might even work in practice for less than the minimum wage if you work enough weekends for no pay etc. Then eventually it might or might not come good - it is a gamble.

@ViceLikeBlip a lot of these jobs have massive stress, poor work/life balance. A well known American law firm in London (new grads start on over 100k) was well known for calling trainees on first day of their holiday saying it was urgent and they have to come in. It was a test. If you didn’t come in it would be a black market against you.

Lots of friends have done the whole “I’ll do it for x years and then move out of London, some do, but majority live to the income, they have kids etc and end up feeling they have to continue”.

[quote Sunshinebuttercups]@ViceLikeBlip a lot of these jobs have massive stress, poor work/life balance. A well known American law firm in London (new grads start on over 100k) was well known for calling trainees on first day of their holiday saying it was urgent and they have to come in. It was a test. If you didn’t come in it would be a black market against you.

Lots of friends have done the whole “I’ll do it for x years and then move out of London, some do, but majority live to the income, they have kids etc and end up feeling they have to continue”.[/quote]
I guess I was really feeling like teaching is also a ridiculous work load and constant stress from never being able to a good enough job at everything (partly internal stress from wanting to do a good job, partly external stress from the ridiculous demands made on us)

So I sometimes wonder whether, if I'm already doing the whole "work til midnight, give up most Saturdays" bit anyway, maybe I should be looking to get paid more?!

It's the first time I've heard that spin on it, but back in the 1980s a friend in HR advised me that a change of job would take roughly the equivalent number of weeks as the £,000 you were seeking. Unless you were head-hunted, of course.

It's nonsensical otherwise: clearly someone working in retail couldn't normally expect a salary to increase annually to £67k at retirement.

What is the Average UK Salary in 2020/2021?
According to the ONS, in 2020 the average UK salary was £38,600 for a full-time role and £13,803 for part-time role. This is an increase from their 2019 figures, which placed the average UK wage for a full-time role at £36,611 and part-time at £12,495.

The median salary for full-time work was also higher year on year, £31,461 for full-time work and £11,234 for part-time work.The median salary in the UK is a better number to compare your wage against, as it is less suspectible to being skewed by a few people earning a considerable amount of money. The median sits directly in the centre of all the wages, a true "middlepoint" against which you can judge your own earnings, rather than the average which is affected by the 10% who earn over £62,589+ per year.

(Copied from internet)

@ViceLikeBlip

40k as experienced teacher with no extra responsibilities. Feels like a decent professional salary round here (Midlands) but i do often wonder just how much extra work/stress those mythical 100k+ London jobs really are....

My experience in law was having a permanent sinking feeling in my stomach 24/7. Like I was always playing catch up and just one mistake away from losing my job or worse, my career. I've had plenty of busy and stressful jobs but nothing that ever felt quite as bad as that.

@olidora63

Two of my children have decent degrees from Uni in the top ten rankings. They are both scraping £22-24 K a year ! Absolutely rubbish and we still pay for their cars to be fixed etc …not sure how their generation will ever be 100% independent!

Well what sort of effort have they put into looking for a job? What field are they in? Again anecdotal but I have recruitment experience across 2 generalist industries (tech/finance) hiring from all degree backgrounds and we recruit plenty from all sorts of universities. The majority have explored their career options starting in 3rd year, got some part-time jobs/extracurriculars on their CV and hence very employable.

There are also plenty who have waited until after graduating to think about careers by which time it's too late. They'll be competing with people who have already got substantial CV's.

If you children want to be high earners there's nothing stopping them from doing their research and changing fields....

I work 9-5pm and never do any extra hours. There are lots of really high fliers in my workplace earning over £100k. They all work incredibly long hours, and in spite of running and cycling being a common hobby, many have major physical health problems in their late fifties such as cancer or a stroke.

Someone said the mythical London jobs (£100k+) Look at NHS salaries for Yorkshire consultants never mind London ! Look at super heads' pay even withing teaching. Look at newly qualified lawyer jobs in big firms £100k in some nowadays (that is after a degree, post grad and 2 years of training so at least 6 years before you get to that) It is not mythical.

This tool told my sister she was in the poorest 1% in the country. She earns 38k!

She filled it in wrongly, or she has numerous children, or she pays an astronomical amount of council tax.

[quote julieca]@PileOfBooks the refusal to take responsibility infuriates me. As if someone makes people buy more expensive houses or a more expensive car. I don't understand why seemingly intelligent people won't take responsibility for their spending decisions.
DP and I are not high-earners but are better off than we should be for our salaries. That is because we haven't increased our spending as our income has increased a bit except on discretionary spend like holidays. I now earn £28k, DP £25k. But we take responsibility for our own spending.[/quote]
Exactly this. We're better off than a lot of our friends who on paper earn more. It's because our spending hasn't increased when our pay has. We live well, eat out about once a month, spend tons on food, go abroad once a year, have quite a lavish Xmas (both things are saved for every month) but we don't buy coffees out or spend tons on clothes or things like that. We both drive second hand cars bought outright (again we have a monthly fund for cars). My husband got a fairly decent pay rise recently and it just means we can save more. A family member who has a lot of debt had a decent pay rise recently and immediately traded in his already expensive car and took out anither huge loan which would have eaten up all of his monthly pay rise. That rise could've got them out of debt and back into a really good position but that's just the way they are. Both earning really good salaries but live hand to mouth and are in max overdraft at end of every month

Yes I am always a bit aghast when people say it is normal for one person to spend a £100 on a night out.

@julieca for a lot of the highly paid jobs i.e. 100k, they are mainly in London in financial services. in Biglaw and in investment banks, you can be at your desk until midnight or 3 am. Yes you will earn a lot (at least 6 figures, starting salary 70k) but you will more likely need to rent very near your office, you will need to buy lunch and dinner out, you will need decent office wear (and drycleaning). Very normal to work weekends too.

My DH works for an investment bank, he is in a middle office rather than front office role (and earns less) but working till 8 pm or 9 pm is not unusual. So we bought in london cos commuting from outside London would have put too much of a strain on him. He buys lunch at canary wharf so he doesn't need to think about packing a lunch. No one made us buy in London; its just that if you want to work in a bank in canary wharf, you have to live in London or at least in commuting distance and even if you are willing to commute despite your working hours, you would have to pay the commuter fares of at least 4k-5k per annum (so you are often spending the same as someone who stayed in London...).

I'm just starting as a university lecture, making around £40k. It's maybe not a huge amount when you consider the years of education, but to me it feels like quite a lot, considering that 5 years ago I was living on a phd stipend of £12k/year. Husband earns a bit less, but I'd definitely say we're comfortable: we pay into our pensions, save monthly, and can afford all the things that are important to us.

@julieca

Yes I am always a bit aghast when people say it is normal for one person to spend a £100 on a night out.

I remember a thread on here a few months ago with a poster saying her friends spend that much - and everyone else agreeing that £100 was normal! I’m a high earner and I was shocked! Even if you go out somewhere where drinks cost £4 you don’t have to keep buying drinks every time you finish one ….

@Starrycolors23

Should add for regions at EY the salary difference was only slight, so a qualified accountant (aged 24) was on £44k.

Associate partners (not proper partners) we’re on six figures everywhere
Actual partners in the LLP were on millions.

This isn't quite right - average partner pay in the UK was just shy of £700,000 for the year, so yes, some partners are on millions, but most are on less.

Between us we earn 180k ish in London in our late 20s and would struggle to afford to have a child and continue to work full time .

We both pay about 30% into salary sacrifice pensions though so our take home is reduced significantly and some of that is from bonuses which are unreliable.

The nursery closest to my house charges 1800 a month !

@TractorAndHeadphones where are the £4 drinks these days?

It really depends on where you live and what you do. Someone up thread said 100k jobs are in financial services and they are correct it's a very well paid industry. I earn more than that part time.

and I'm certainly not working all hours god sends. It a very distorted world.

[quote Nanananani]@TractorAndHeadphones where are the £4 drinks these days?[/quote]
Yes, if only a cheap night out!

£4 for a pint £7 for a glass of wine, getting to £100 is a stretch

It's interesting to read about earnings, and I'm no longer involved as I am just about to retire, but my DS is at uni, studying in one of the fields regarded as precarious (TV and film) at a mid-ranked university. He was tipped off to an opportunity this summer by his A level maths tutor as a COVID runner. He got the job (entry level), did it to the best of his ability, made sure he knew everyone on set and asked to shadow the DoPhotography on his days off. So when someone got injured, and there was a promotion slot, he was the one moved up. He said thanks to the DoP who replied, I did nothing, you wanted it and asked. So at the end of his first year of virtual uni, he has already been called by the top/biggest TV production company in the UK to ask if he could fit in another production before term started. And after seven weeks (flat out) work, the first four weeks of his second year are just stuff he knows already. That is how work-ready our DC need to become.