To think this is appalling? (Civil Service salary)

[MrsSchadenfreude]

Having a clear out the other day, I found some old payslips from 2001 when I was an HEO in the civil service. I was earning just over £27,000. I thought I would have a look and see what an HEO earns today. Outside London, the starting salary is £27,150, with those in London getting £30,388. So virtually no rise in 20 years!

That seems low, I just googled and not sure if same place you looked but it was not correct. EO’s are on that I think.

And I was an EO when I started in 2001 and it was 16k, as I say it’s around 30k now so definitely risen

Salaries vary across departments, but yes public sector salaries have hardly risen for a long time. My department had a 10 year pay freeze during that time, so salaries went up maybe 1% a year. With inflation so high, some people at lower grades will be really struggling.

Yes I agree they vary by department. I'm an EO grade, and with pay freezes at the same time as inflation going up we've pretty much had a pay cut. I know lots of colleagues who have left for the private sector, although that's more to do with staff shortages and poor management on the frontline.

Oh yes, I think I was looking at the wrong grade, but salaries for HEO still only start on around £30,000. So a £3,000 rise in 21 years isn’t much!

I'm a civil service HEO on £38,000 outside of London.

DH has had one pay rise in 15 years as a civil servant EO think it was 2%

Utterly shit

The MPs get a notable pay rise year on year yet "we're all in it together"

I'm an O (EO) in old money. London based and the full time salary is £33,000 in my department.

Which department is that? I've seen SEO starting around the 38k mark

My industry is similar. Salaries haven’t really changed in decades, and what would have seemed a nice salary years ago -19k - is low now. I work in the media.

I'm an HEO on just over £32k and top of the payband (HMPPS) outside London.

I was an SEO before this in another agency on £43k but took a much more interesting and less stressful role. Worth every penny!

I am HEO in a smaller CS dept on £31k all new recruits at HEO level for us are set at £30550
Been a civil servant for years and earned way more as an EO as we had overtime and night shift allowance due to the nature of the job.
None of my HEO colleagues that I am close enough to discuss salary with are on £38k but CS jobs does advertise them in certain depts.
I saw a CS role recently that wanted a degree for EO level ( but it was more specialist)

HEO here, not London, on just over £27000.

Yup!! I work in a business support service that you can literally go and do in any industry - so my view isn’t industry specific, I started working in 2005 and can remember looking at senior roles in various industry magazines, I get alerts for jobs at this level now via LinkedIn….the salaries are virtually the same if not lower in lots of cases. That’s whilst director salaries and shareholder dividends have risen and risen.

Get angry, I’m not sure what we do but I’ve said it on threads before there has been a wage depression as well as stagnation in this country. That is the root of it. And I live in an area with lots of expats now from China, US, continental Europe and it is very much a UK problem. We’re being utterly rinsed. We don’t need higher benefits we just need everyone to be paid a decent and fair wage!

I started as a direct entrant to Grade 7 back in 2002 on 40k. You could do quite a lot with that in those days, including buying a central London flat in my case. Not sure what the salaries are now as I left the civil service in 2011, but I imagine they haven't moved on very much. Public sector salaries have really stagnated in the UK, unlike house prices.

There are discrepancies across departments in the CS. For example FCO & HMT pay worse than BEIS or DIT. Also if you've been promoted to a grade, you'll start at the lowest level, while if you've joined from outside you can negotiate. Really glad I played hardball when I joined as have barely had an increase in 5 years.

DH dept (used to work there too) was a relevant degree to be an AP lab rat, barely pays the living wage and is in the SE, utter piss take

G7 starts around £50k now.

I started as a direct entrant to Grade 7 back in 2002 on 40k. You could do quite a lot with that in those days, including buying a central London flat in my case

Yes £40K was a pretty decent salary in the early 2000s

HEO in my department is £27,000, I am G7 on £45k

Similar across the whole public sector. At the same time that conditions have been getting worse and worse. Thanks austerity.

And now we’re going to be expected to make and deal with the consequences of more cuts.

Interestingly MP salaries have risen by over 18k since 2010 - a rise of 28%. Not sure many other public sector workers can say the same.

This is what has happened to civil service pay.

A complete pay freeze for a decade. And then last couple of years token amounts, resulting in real term pay cuts.

Quite similar in some areas of the private sector as well. Where I started my grad job in 2007 the salaries for new starter has only gone up by a couple of grand.

Perhaps you were massively overpaid in 2001and it has finally be corrected?

(I'm only joking!)

Capitalism doesn’t often deliver in favour of workers

Accountancy grad schemes have barely moved in the last 15-20 years. We had managers, senior managers who had joined 10-12 years before us on the exact same graduate starting salary. I’ve seen articles saying the big 4 have finally starting increasing entry level pay this year as they can’t fill their recruitment quotas post pandemic.