To think with min wage going up 6.7% that

[Frugalcheesecake]

Minimum wage is going up 6.7% next year. My pay has gone up by tiny amounts in comparison to this and is stagnating some years compared to inflation. I only earn a bit above min wage and I find my job very stressful.

Yes I know some minimum wage jobs are stressful but Ive done some that are easy too. AIBU to think that if min wage gets close to your wage a lot of people will quit just to get an easier min wage job if they can find one that is less stress

Supply and demand

But the skilled jobs are much more mentally stimulating, you get treated better, get proper sick pay, a comfortable desk or the comfort of working from your home and generally more fulfilling?

I think all these posts are ridiculous. Cleaning toilets and stacking shelves would mentally kill me. I'd still much rather have my wfh job with the flexibility to do school pick ups and get treated with respect, even if my salary ended up being less than someone who cleans toilets or stacks shelves. Those jobs are just as respectable as yours and the people doing them work just as hard. TBH they probably work much harder than I do in my comfy skilled office job.

The thing you and several others appear not to realise is that there are numerous motivations for employment apart from money. Some people are happy with what they earn and don’t give differential a thought, others value prospects of advancement, others flexiblity, while convenience or a very sort commute would motivate some people. In your scenario the job could easily represent a step up or a ten minute commute for some applicants which would make it attractive. It’s far more nuanced than supply and demand.

That's a little bit patronising.

I was very happy in my job before. It didn't pay much but it was charity work. But as the cost of living increased, my bills increased, the charity could not afford a pay rise as their wage bill had increased.

So I took the tough decision to leave

It isn’t remotely patronising. It’s reality.

It's a pointless exercise for two reasons 1) if you increase NMW then everything increases in price anyway, effectively it's 'natural inflation' 2) Companies which have just being making enough of a profit to stay afloat get wrapped up as the directors decide to quit whilst they are ahead, multinationals move more jobs over seas, small companies get sold on. All of this has a negative impact on the national economy.
The result is less tax being collected and higher unemployment.

I think people should be paid enough to live and if you work full time you should not have to claim benefits to survive. A lot of employers, especially large companies, do have enough profits to pay people properly.
If you are a business and can't afford to employ people then maybe the government should not be subsiding your business.
Carers, nursery workers, TAs, all do really valuable work and are underpaid Imo.
It's not a race to the bottom.
However I do strongly agree that jobs which are paid above the minimum wage haven't kept pace and are now paid close to minimum wage.
Many of these jobs you need significant training or experience for and/or need a degree/student debt.
One DC has just got a first job as an assistant clinical psychologist, pay is 25.5k pa, she did a 4year bsc including an unpaid work placement year and a masters, it's very competitive field to get into, but pay is just over the minimum wage and she has 58k of student debt. I'm hoping she will progress and earn more but it seems to progress to a senior level you need a doctorate.
The pay doesn't seem commensurate with the training and responsibility.
My other DC is a heritage stonemason working in a cathedral. Served 3 year apprenticeship and 2 years further training, studying for several qualifications along the way. It's skilled work, does carvings well as repairing stone, out in all weathers but still paid only slightly over minimum wage.
He discovered recently he would earn more in primark, it's dispiriting. Having said neither of my DC will give up and work in primark because they love their work, but my son in particular is thinking of changing trades / retraining.
Mine and DHs salarys also haven't kept pace with inflation, in real terms we are earning less than 10-15 years ago, even after promotion. We've had years of below inflation pay increases or no pay increases at all.

There is also the physical aspect to it. Someone has already mentioned their wfh job. If your job is sitting in an office or at home, try spending 8 hours on your feet , bending, lifting, dragging cages of stock out , climbing up and down to put the stock out. Remember if you are sat on a checkout you can't just jump up and go to the toilet when you feel like it, you have to buzz for someone to come and cover you

Yep, what’s gonna happen is that stats are gonna show there’s more people on minimum wage, because the people NOT on NMW now soon will be classed as that when the raise happens

So pp.was correct, on me you're not paying back student loan.

The business collapses because one low waged worker leaves? 🤣🤣🤣

They need to concentrate on:

• making ALL big corporates pay proper taxes
• reducing the cost of utilities (power and water)
• shaming the supermarkets into reducing their prices once that has happened.

So basic life is just cheaper again. Less need to raise the minimum wage then. And such rises do affect small businesses more than the big corporates.

I can’t bare to hear the bleating about the winter fuel allowance anymore. We should be outraged that old people NEED an allowance to meet their basic needs - plus everyone should have affordable power and water.

I worry about that too but then I realise that minimum wage jobs pay well per hour because they are not salaried and are not permanent. Often, employers prefer a high turnover of staff so that they keep them on their toes. A lot of them employ lots of people part-time than having fewer staff full time in case there’s staff absence.

Because of that, minimum wage jobs are more like £8ph than £11.

I just think its too simplistic to say its all about skills/shortages.

& nurses and other HCP 's do vital jobs, highly skilled and in all honesty, if you were very ill or a loved one was, you'd want them far more than a Rocket Scientist or a Hedge fund manager.

TAs I think are massively underpaid for the jobs they do. Made worse by the fact they are only paid for term time.

You are spot on.

A job isn't just about the wage. Often minimum wage jobs mean working bank holidays (one day off over Xmas is standard), no sick pay, only the statutory amount of days off, no flexible working, no set hours so you don't know your hours in advance, no WFH, manual dirty work, minimum breaks, bag checks, monitored toilet breaks etc etc.

A lot of us work in the public sector or places like private nurseries where pay doesn't really vary much as the amount the government pays for 30 free hours sort of fixes the system at a certain rate even though it's a private employer. The nurseries round me are desperate for room leaders but people just dont find the extra responsibility worth it. They offer £1000 join us bonuses but it's a real struggle.

Some are, mine is permanent and salaried

You'll find that supermarkets won't want you as you are over qualified. I applied to several when DD was younger and a flexible job like that would have been perfect and got turned down because they didn't think I'd stay long and recruitment etc is expensive.

...and yet another reason why uk productivity is shite.

You'll never get the best out of anyone by "keeping them on their toes" ie always worried about losing their job and PT often means time wasted on handovers.

High staff turnovers just mean no one actually gets to do their job properly, those that stay do the bare minimum & people with potential leave.

You're telling someone who used to work for a charity, was happy working there, not getting much money but valuing the job, the people, the easy commute and the ethos that some people don't take jobs for money but for other reasons besides money

Thank you for explaining that to me.

The last role I had before being SAHP/self-employed was a finance admin role that required quite a bit of responsibility. It used to pay a fairly decent, average salary over a decade a go. I had a glance over recruitments recently, just out of curiosity, and the average salary for a similar role in my area is now only about 2k higher than it was way back then!
My OH is having the same issue where there have been virtually no rises for years in his office based manager role. Salaries for white collar jobs have been stagnating for years. I'm trying to talk him into retraining as an electrician.

There’s something deeply depressing about seeing so many people uniting in wanting to deny to-the poorest people in the country a wage they can actually live on.

That’s true and a nice sentiment, but ‘importance’ is not the main factor that dictates wages - otherwise key workers like nurses, teachers and carers would be paid much more! The biggest factor is typically the qualifications/skills required (in short, a cleaner gets paid less than an electrician because the electrician can clean your toilet but the cleaner can’t wire your house). Others key factors are level of responsibility/accountability, supply of suitable candidates, etc.

Like I said, I think everyone is entitled to decent quality of life, but certain job roles do need to be paid more highly than others in order to attract the necessary talent. People will just stop bothering to gain qualifications/skills if they can earn the same doing a less stressful role which doesn’t require them to spend 3 years at university or college first.

Meanwhile most are just pointing out that as the minimum wage grows the gap between grades and jobs shrinks making some jobs much less appealing. Do you not think that's an issue? I'm sure people would agree the ideal solution would be for these roles to have increases too rather than to deny minimum wage workers a rise to be spiteful.