Is this classed as a ‘high earner’?

[Earnerlesr]

65k.

And if it’s not, what figure starts to be classed as a high earner?

Oh your live in Scotland too! So do I. I have a goat I’d like to trade but I won’t take less than £60k (£100k for a breeding pair).

Lol pretty much all of my neighbours are in the oil industry here in Scotland and earn more than 100k . Lol the perception of those in England that the whole if Scotland is poor is actually amusing to us living up here .

I think this a demonstration of “it’s all relative” - my perception of a “high earner” is somewhat like yours - can afford private school, large house, luxury holidays etc.

But if someone is struggling to put food on the table then the income and lifestyles we have will probably meet their perception of “high earner”.

I’m under no illusion that incomes like your DH and my own ARE “high earning”, though that doesn’t mean it feels like that (however aware you are of your own privilege!)

£100K? How do they survive on such a measly salary?

I earn £65k and I can save and pay my mortgage and eat out a lot and have a few holidays usually, however when I go back to work after mat leave I'll have very little left after bills and nursery fees. After 50k you only get 60% of any pay increase so it's sometimes better to work part time as if you lose 20% of working days you lose a lot less than 20% of your income

@WhileMyGuitarGentlyWeeps we all live in caves and ride our sheep to work so the cost of living is dead cheap 😏

Yes it is in real life but on MN it's pocket money.

🤣🤣🤣 now there's an offer I can't refuse. £80k for the breeding pair and I'll throw in some lovely wool I wove at my loom.

Exactly this!! Glasgow as well has huge amounts of wealth!

Some of the opinions expressed on this thread are just dreadful. How can anyone really be so out of touch that they try to claim that £100k is a low income, even in London? Someone up thread said something about the invisibility of lower earners...so true.

These people can't truly believe that all of the supermarket staff, delivery drivers, cleaners, binmen, transport workers, nurses, teachers, receptionists, childcare workers etc are all earning at least £100k a year. Do they believe that these people all commute into London from somewhere much cheaper to carry out these jobs? Or do they just not really consider them as proper people, but rather just robots who exist to meet their needs and those of their super-rich friends?

It's disgusting to encounter such ignorance. There is nothing wrong with being wealthy - I'm lucky enough to be in a very good financial position myself - but ffs, at least have a little awareness of your own privilege.

In London - I wouldn’t say that was high earner.

Yet the median pay for London is only 41k so 65 is more than half as much again ... and half of people earn less than 41k

So it's still pretty high even for London

It's all relative. No-one has suggested that most people earn over 100k but a fair few do, and some earn sickeningly huge salaries. One of my friends is married to the cheif exec of a clothing company and he earns 4 million a year and she hasn't worked for years. Fair, no...but it happens more than you'd like to think.

I don’t think that’s what’s being said. I think the main point being made is that there is little visibility of the HIGHER paid jobs, like the person who claimed that there would be less than 50 people in their county earning above £100k. The reality is there are a lot - about one person in 20. Yet you still get this incredulity that some people earn more.

It’s a personal bugbear of mine because if people don’t realise those jobs are available then they don’t try to get them. Through no fault of their own. So we get people accepting lower pay as the norm and not having options.

Obviously it would be better if things were evened out, but while they are not the least we can do is increase visibility of opportunity.

Yes, of course it's all relative and I'm well aware that some people are on huge incomes...I know quite a few myself. However, there are posters on here arguing that £100k is a "low salary" in London. If £100k counts as low, then what are average or below average salaries?

Yes, £100k is a lot lower than £4million or whatever, but the fact remains that it is not a low salary from any objective perspective. And it is beyond crass to suggest that it is.

Fair enough, I only skimmed some parts of the thread because some of the comments are so infuriating.

I agree, of course, that high earners are not that unusual - even outside London, there are plenty of jobs that pay well.

I get what you're saying about people not going for those jobs because they don't realise that they exist, and that might be true in some cases. Of course, in other cases, people might have their own reasons for preferring to work in roles which are less well paid, e.g. because perceive the work as being valuable in other ways.

Regardless, my point still stands. Many higher earners on this thread are seemingly oblivious to the many lower earners that enable their lives to function effectively. And I think that's pretty crap personally.

The 'invisibilty' of higher earners is not the "main point being made" on the thread! There are a few posters who seem strangely reluctant to believe the stated 6 figure earnings of others. But only a very small minority of posters.
You say It’s a personal bugbear of mine because if people don’t realise those jobs are available then they don’t try to get them. That's plainly ridiculous. Every individual who opts for careers in education, social care, health etc etc knows full well that if they opted for other career paths they are more likely to earn more. Every professional in the public sector knows they could earn more in the private sector. And when they make that move its not the other top 5% earners who suffer. Look at dentistry right now. It is almost impossible to find an nhs dentist. The private dentistry sector is fine and dandy and the top 5% earners have no problem paying. But it's devastating for the rest of the population who need a dentist.
The payscale for Headteachers in the state sector ranges from £50k to £123k. So it's not a lack of knowledge about higher paid jobs keeping the vast majority of the education profession below £100k! Its the almost total absence of jobs paying sanything like £100k!! Same with nurses, social workers etc etc
Job seekers with limited qualifications are not failing to get high paid jobs because they "don't realise" such jobs exist 🙄
I could go on...

1 in 20 people do not earn 100k. If it puts you in the top 5% of earners that is out of people in work. So it would be more like 1 in 40. There are also enormous geographical/ area variations within this.

In terms of ‘personal bugbears’ careers education is poor. 100k + earning is irrelevant but the number of kids who think they are going to be film producers or forensic scientists. Kids needs support matching their skills and strengths to the actual jobs available rather than dreams. That will lead to people being a lot more productive and fewer media graduates working in bars.

They actually doesn't nullify anything I've said - regardless of it being after tax, it is still in the middle, not the bottom. And it's household, not single income.

Good point. And it's top 5% of full time earners. So in the general population there are millions of part time earners as well as non earners including benefit recipients. So the 1 in 20 people assertion is ridiculous

Depends where you are in the country.

I’m in London and it’s far from a high earner here. For me, over £100k I think is a high earner, maybe £120k

This is such a great example of the different response types in this thread.

Whether "high" means just higher than average, or what one personally would need to earn to consider they earned a high salary - which in many cases would be quite a bit above the average

I don’t normally get answers to everything in life from government but ONS’s definition is that high is an hourly rate that is 50% higher than the median. So about £23 per hour.

So based on that 65k is certainly high as is 50k. I think that people think high earner = rich which definitely isn’t the case. You can be rich without being a high earner.

It's definitely a high earner here in London where I live (in zone 1) and we know very few households with that high an income, no individuals.