AIBU to think these salaries for "shortage occupations" are completely off?

[foolsgolddigger]

I was helping someone to research work visa options in the UK and stumbled upon the official salary guidance for the shortage occupations list. Every occupation comes with a "going rate", i.e. what I understand to be the market average. Applicants are required to be paid no less than 80% of that rate (which is a good idea, in principle, to prevent wage undercutting as well as exploitation).

I have first-hand experience only with a few areas from the list (either own or through friends and family). I don't think I have ever met a software developer or architect on £27K or an actuary on £26K. Quite a few of occupations specify minimum prior experience (e.g. 3 years), so clearly do not assume grad level.

Tell me I am not crazy and it looks very odd for other areas too?

Here's the list:

Skilled Worker visa: shortage occupations - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The only one I can comment on is 'biological scientists and biochemists'. Someone with a degree and 3 years relevant experience would start on about £30k in my organisation, so the number they've given for 80% looks right for that.

But why is it OK to only pay 80%????

I'd guess the "going rate" figures are set higher than reality to make it harder for immigrant workers to get the jobs? So that if there's a citizen here looking for a job and they'd get 24K, if a company imports a worker they have to pay them more, therefore they go for the cheaper, local option.

Several of those “going rate” indicators are well below the adult minimum wage.

So much for a high skill high pay economy eh?

I think the 80% is intended to reflect that there is a natural variation in salaries in all professions, so "must be above 80% of average" sounds sensible. As there will naturally be jobs that pay below the average (by the very definition of average).

It is the average that looks weird to me, but again, my experience is limited to just a few lines in that list. Thank you!

No, it’s the opposite. By importing a worker the employer can pay them just 80% of the wage an existing UK resident might expect.

Yeah just checked as knew my profession would be on the list. No way would this be even close to "going rate" for even a new grad, it suggests just over 26K when most ads that are looking for new grads are 30K upwards (and considering the recruitment crisis in our sector most are closer to 35K for new grads).

Yes, I also noticed. £8.41 per hour for artists or £9.44 for graphic designers.

I don't know any of our Dev team earning £27k. That sounds low to me.

A very quick google shows that architects with up to 5 years' experience and ARB registered, working in a chartered practice, we're on average paid £35k in 2022.

Not a million miles from £26.5k being the 80% mark quoted, and then consider that not all will have 5yrs experience, be ARB reg'd and work in a chartered practice.

I only know about software development. Many large organisations are now almost entirely staffed by workers from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh on Inter Company Transfers. They are paid very low wages as they are on pay scales applicable for their place of origin. This has dragged down all development and devops type salaries except for highly niche roles.

Exactly. This government is all about importing cheap workers and/or exporting jobs.
Our PM is married to the daughter of a massive Indian tech company largely dedicated to this mission.

The salary given for my industry is ridiculously low, even for a grad.

The issue is that 'prorgrammers' covers an extremely wide range and in 2023 many of these roles require close collaboration and co-ordination in the organisation that the cheaper workers in these countries just can't do. Offshoring comes and goes in waves.

I'm a devops/infrastructure engineer and still very much in demand but also I work in core platforms and security. The code monkey jobs are gone but there is very much a demand for people who have a good grasp of systems and all their moving parts. I have rescued a lot of offshore code and I have to say a short-term saving causes long-term issues that are far more expensive to fix.

The REAL issue here is that all jobs have to fit in a specific occupation code, 'programmers and software development' can theoretically cover everything from people who just write SQL all day to highly experienced professionals like me.

I know a couple of people from DH's uni course earning 27-30K. One is a 'data developer' for the NHS and earns 27K. The other, L1 support for a software company and earns 30K. Those salaries are not far off.

Also despite everything the SOC occupation lists it's notoriously difficult to find sponsored jobs. Even in my field, a lot of companies on the list don't sponsor for general jobs, it's for graduates. transfers, etc.

My current company moved back to UK hiring after India was a washout. Different people interviewing and turning up for the job, the good ones were constantly lured away by BigTech (Google/Microsoft/etc) or even going abroad because they didn't want to live in India anymore.

The REAL issue here is that all jobs have to fit in a specific occupation code, 'programmers and software development' can theoretically cover everything from people who just write SQL all day to highly experienced professionals like me.
As someone who (mainly) writes SQL all day I feel seen lol. But yes, I can see your point - probably my circle is just too skewed towards much highly paid people. The last grad we hired was on £41K + £4K probation bonus.

Well, before Brexit we could just use cheap eastern EU labour....

"The REAL issue here is that all jobs have to fit in a specific occupation code, 'programmers and software development' can theoretically cover everything from people who just write SQL all day to highly experienced professionals like me." @NDWifeandMan

As someone who is a senior data engineer and largely "just writes SQL all day"... Oi! A little respect, please? I am also a highly experienced professional.

The list is universal, for EU and non-EU candidates. So still can use cheap eastern EU labour, just with more bureaucratic hoops to jump through.

Vets and Architects at £26k, they are having a laugh!

Also artists as a shortage occupation? Really? Where is the demand? Most artists I know are having to take second jobs to supplement their income.

Maybe under "artists" they meant something closer to "art teachers". As this is a list for the skilled work visa, the applicant has to have a PAYE job offer. I do not know any artists hired as "artists" on payroll tbh.

The keyword here is 'just'. With all due respect, no real 'senior data engineer' spends the majority of their time writing SQL and doing nothing else. But then again, companies love inflating their job titles, especially in tech. So who knows what anything means? W.r.t to the skills required... this is my take
@foolsgolddigger no hate for SQL, but we are having an objective discussion as to what different professions (and, in those professions, specific skills) are worth.

The 'data developer' I mentioned - all he does is write SQL to create reports. Because the users themselves refuse to learn SQL. A normal request for him is 'can you get this report but with one extra column and from X to Y date' which, I'm sure you can agree is hardly taxing. A quick Google tells you the queries you need. He does this all day.

Now, if you were integrating different data sources into a user friendly format for self-service,creating schemas, enforcing good data practices (like clear data lineage), building ETL pipelines, working with data at scale. That's a higher level skillset and worthy of a higher salary.

FWIW I myself started out writing SQL and Python scripts to concatenate Excel files, then I moved towards building out the data sources itself, so on and so forth into my current role. Of course I know what the skill differences are between the two. The first I could largely do with lots of Googling and the second requires more experience but also systems-level thinking due to the amount of of moving parts.

The salaries all seem really low

Also @foolsgolddigger my company hired grads on almost the same package as you stated actually. 41K starting 5K signing bonus. But grads can be allocated to any team, a grad can be in a job that a direct hire would never have been approved for, for that much salary.

Unlike my former field (accounting) there is SO much variation in tech we have a team of FT people involved in salary benchmarking. And as soon as they finish... it's already out of date.

Are there really shortages of archaeologists, dancers and artists? Archaeology in particular I have always thought to be flooded with graduates in disproportionate number to the jobs available.

Exactly, if there are vacancies for "artists" I would love to see them.

Graphic designer too, DH was a graphic designer, the pay is dreadful and employers aren't interested in training people in systems they aren't familiar with or bringing skills up to date. The industry has been treating new grads as disposable cheap labour for years, there are loads of graphic designers who have left the industry and could be recruited, but they won't if employers can import cheap labour at minimum wage.

@NDWifeandMan I think we both understood what you meant - from my side, it was meant in jest. I am in data science / applied stats and manage quite a big team (well, big for this area, probably would look small for other tech areas). A surprising % of my own time is still spent on writing code with my own hands. I actually don't know whether this is normal or not. On one hand, it really helps to stay hands-on, on another hand, I feel it is a limiting factor for the whole team now. OK, this is seriously off topic now.
On the topic - I thought with the advent of PowerBI and similar tools, the basic query-constructing tasks you mentioned are almost universally outsourced to the user side, but obviously looks like not everywhere.