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

Nail on the head. At least someone gets the reality!

All that will happen is that businesses will keep raising their prices. One day we’ll have cleaners on £60k per year but if a weeks shop for Asda basics costs £300, what difference does it make?

I disagree that's what they are saying.

The only people complaining are those on low salaries and they aren't complaining about the people on minimum wage, they are weighing up if their role is still worth the extra hassle or not for them.

Many may well decide that actually they like their job, it's interesting, they like thier desk, they feel they could progress, its close to home and a few extra pounds is more that worth it. But it's also not unreasonable to decide they don't want to be responsible for the person below them, for an extra few pence an hour but apart from that the jobs are largely the same.

Otterlymad I sympathise ,but as I tell DS who has a Science degree, and is on over 50k (still paying loan back as well)plus a hefty bonus .He may have done 4 years at Uni, but if he (or you) got made redundant tomorrow. You guys will get another well paid interesting job easily.Shop workers are customer facing, which brings its own problems, with rude public and ever demanding management .Watching the chap on the checkouts scanning our big shop ,it looked soul destroying to me .We had a little chat which probably passes the time quicker .Also breath of knowledge .being away from home but under the Uni and so on .Theres more to education than meets the eye!

Not YET, I’m talking about as minimum wage continues to increase and the repayment threshold doesn’t.

@Dutchhouse14 I just wanted to write how you must be proud of both your children though I see the frustrations for both. I worked with a woman whose Father had been a stonemason it’s a dying art sadly. Never met anyone else who was a stonemason or knew one it’s so rare.

DS GF is graduated just a year ago and she does feel this way about the min wage increase, a lot of debt and now on not much more than the basic admin staff and she is running an entire dept. The costs will get passed on to the consumer in many cases as well. We raised this with our local MP who came round door knocking recently but he said he wouldn’t apologise for Labours stance on any min wage advances but as he stood there with his what is it about 80k salary and huge expenses cushion it just irritated me.

Yep, it's crap

I'm on min wage (well 1p per hour above!) and every year I have 2 months where I actually have £50 left over for something
Then council tax goes up, food goes up, gas and electric goes up and I'm back to having no money after bills until the following year

Similar in nursing. Lowest Band 5 RGN pay is not a great deal more than a Band 3 health care support worker (about £3 an hour). Band 3s also get a bigger % for unsocial hours than band 5s, and pay proportionately less tax/NI. So the take home pay between the two can be marginal.

I have a friend who is a health care support worker. She works 3 nights a week and says that she has considered training to be a nurse but money and stress wise it's just not worth it because doing nights is quite lucrative. I don't blame her.

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?

But that's the problem isn't it, people are now expected to do those jobs for little more than NMW and companies often aren't offering those benefits, they're offering as little as they can get away with.

On the face of it, I could see how people would agree, but there is more to it IMO.

I run a firm of accountants. We have someone that started as a trainee, but failed his apprenticeship. He's a good lad and does his job well - he's just not interested in any further training at this moment in time.

His job does have some stressful periods but generally he's in the door at 9am and out again at 5.30pm.

Up until recently he'd have been miles away from minimum wage, but that minimum wage has now been brought up to his level so he's now officially on minimum wage.

I considered whether people would likely choose a supermarket job over a professional role on minimum wage but ultimately my colleague works 37.5 hours a week, Monday to Friday, so no anti-social hours, etc.

He then still has the opportunity to further his career if he decides he wants to later.

Also, I don't think that minimum wage has increased to a rate that is too high, as even being on minimum wage still won't allow most people to live in their own home in most parts of the country. I just see it that minimum wage has just been way too low.

At the old minimum wage people still couldn't afford to rent or buy their own places, so would likely have to rely on Universal Credit to top it up or pay a housing element.

With NMW going up, this should (in theory!) reduce the amount of UC top up that is required.

Unfortunately there will be other knock on effects like other costs going up. The supermarkets could, conceivably, swallow the increase in cost through their profits (but won't, because they have shareholders to answer to), but your family run independent restaurant probably won't, so their prices will have to go up.

Those saying that they'll be earning the same as someone cleaning toilets - would you want to do the job for £12.21 an hour? I know I wouldn't! I'd much rather have an office job at £12.21 an hour, than cleaning a shitty toilet. Quite frankly those people deserve more!

I don't think that wages are linked to training/qualifications so much as how much people want to do the job.

There are lots of jobs that require a high level of training/qualification/stress that will never be well paid because there's an endless queue of people wanting to do them (academic jobs for example).

I think that wages are more linked to the desirability of the job.

Exactly. If minimum wage doesn't rise, then the lower earners might just as well be on benefits. What the point in working if you can't afford to live?

The gap between the highest earners and the lowest earners needs to shrink considerably. The UK is too unequal.

NMW for 16 and 17 year olds is currently £6.40 and will rise to £7.55 in April. It's a big percentage rise but still more than £2 less than a teaching assistant.

Wage rises in terms of % have never made sense or been fair.

6.7% of 50k is an extra £3,350, whereas 6.7% of 25k is only £1,675

Exactly. So minimum wage going up by 6.7% is not the same as someone on a decent salary whose wage goes up by 6.7%. People on minimum wage are also often on zero hour contracts or only have part time or very variable hours.

I'm on a zero hours contract, sometimes I have 2 or 3 hours in the morning and then two hours off and then another two in the afternoon. I don't get anything for the hours in between obviously and even though most of my day is taken up I get about £50 a day at the end of it. I do it for reasons other than money, but 6% on minimum wage is nothing really, a matter of pence per hour.

That's not happening though. The highest earners are still earning more and more.

The lowest earners are benefitting from NMW rises year on year.

It's the ones who are "one step up" from NMW workers that are being squeezed. Those earning more than minimum wage, but not on "high wages", yet, they've often got a lot more responsibility, supervising/management of staff, management of tills/money, locking up at end of shift, etc., such as team leaders, line managers, etc.

They're just being squeezed again and again, and the regular NMW rises just aren't helping them. The differentials just get smaller and smaller.

The only people complaining are those on low salaries and they aren't complaining about the people on minimum wage, they are weighing up if their role is still worth the extra hassle or not for them. If enough decide that it isn't, then there'll be a shortage of people in that role and the pay will go up.

This is exactly what I mean. Jobs are often paid in accordance with how desirable they are, rather than the level of qualification required to do them. If pay is the most important thing to you, then you really need to think about this before going off and get a qualification in a 'subject you love'. You're not necessarily going to get paid more simply for having the qualification.

It's often the shit boring jobs that have the best pay (i.e. finance, law etc) that nobody would do without the financial incentive.

If anyone has ever worked in retail, I'm sure they know how horrendous it can be dealing with the general public. Most cushy office jobs are far easier. I say this as someone who is currently a higher earner, but who did plenty of retail jobs when I was a student.

Teaching assistants don't work bank holidays, Christmas, weekends or start early/finish late. There's no need to hate on the 16 year olds who are out there trying to earn money the same as everyone else.

I am one of the retail managers you are talking about and yes it is tempting to step back. However you then don't get full time hours so it does result in a significant drop in salary and it also comes (if you stay in your own store or even the same chain) with a huge amount of pressure to step up and cover when the manager is on day off or out sick with no renumeration for it. So personally I can't see many taking that option.

Remuneration!

Yes, but they have to decide to do that for it to happen. So its still a reasonable thing to weigh up pros and cons.
I can't see a huge amount of evidence of employers putting up salaries close to minimum wage, just in case thier employees might decide it's not a big enough gap. They need to see people have.

I have seen cooks threaten to leave as the kitchen porters were now earning almost the same, and it did secure them a rises, but the employer didn't do it spontaneously

Correct a combination of fat fingers and autocorrect

So you dont think cleaners are as valuable as you? Why exactly?

Are you intending to be patronising?

There's been so many threads bickering over min wage going up
It's what, an extra £100pm? It'll be wiped out by council tax increase, fuel and food in no time
If someone posted "is £1675 a good pay rise" everyone would be falling over themselves to say how shit it is but yet when it's applied to low earners somehow it's this huge thing