To think minimum wage is dire. What hourly rate would you work for?

[ColdTantrum]

Been job hunting and shocked at some of the low wages I’ve come across in the UK.

Do you agree the minimum wage is shockingly low?

What’s the lowest hourly rate you would be willing to work for?

It is low, yes. But what people forget is that in one sense it doesn't matter what it is - it will always be "low". If you double it (a) it will still be the lowest wage and (b) prices and costs will rise in line or even faster. So it will never go further than it does now - the minimum wage is a smoke screen. I'm not advocating abolishing it, btw, because I do not want to licence a race to the bottom by employers who already seem to find enough ways to avoid paying it. I am simply saying that raising it has little or no impact on those earning it.

I recall a similar discussion that I had with a senior politician about "levelling up", who said that they wanted to raise the bottom 5% of households out of poverty. They really struggled with understanding why I was saying that would be impossible because there will always be a bottom 5%. They may not always be the same households, but there will always be a bottom 5% - it's the nature of mathematics, not policy! The same is true of the NMW - there will always be people on it no matter what the amount it pays is, and they will never be "better off" because the cost of everything else will rise in relation to it.

there will always be a bottom 5%
But the bottom 5% used to have the basics - secure housing, heat, food and the prospect of studying/training into roles that would give them a better lifestyle. That's gone as the gulf between the richest and poorest in society has become more extreme thanks to govnt policy. We now have more billionaires, more working people in poverty and more than one in four children in the UK growing up in poverty (CPAG). It's a return to Victorian times.

I have never been on minimum wage, but I've been in jobs which today would be minimum wage, and I've earned less than today's minimum wage in real terms.

I think it looks like minimum wage is too low, but that's not the real problem - rather, the problem is:

1. Housing costs. If housing was made a lot more affordable (which'd require building a lot more homes), then wages would go a lot further. Conversely, if minimum wage was to go up significantly tomorrow were increased, then housing costs would go up to eat up all or most of that increase.
2. The proportion of jobs which only pay minimum wage, or barely more, is too high.

As for what I'd work for, if I was choosing to leave my current job I wouldn't take a pay cut. If I was out of work, things'd be different: a couple of years ago it looked fairly likely that I'd be made redundant, and I remember discussing with friends/colleagues - all of us said that if that was to happen then we'd happily take a minimum wage job as a stop-gap so we didn't burn through our redundancy money too quickly while hunting for a job that'd be better for the long-term.

Minimum wage is fine, if it were any higher cost of living would rise yet further. I'm underpaid for my current job since the rise, so I'm looking to move somewhere that will pay me what I'm worth.

Really? I was born in 1957 and into a poor household. My parents ploughed every penny into "housing, heat and food" so yes, we had the basics. Most of the children I grew up with did not - for whatever reason (and that is quite often still the case). You can argue about parents choices, class expectations etc but in the end most of the children that I went to school with did not have those things. My parents didn't have those things either. Their grandparents didn't. The "boomer" golden age did not exist for many people, and was a flash in the pan historically for the working class.

I don't disagree with the principle of what you are saying, and I agree that the gap between rich and poor is widening, but this isn't a "return to the Victorian times" - they never really went away.

That said, that still doesn't change the fact that raising the NMW or lifting the bottom 5% "out of poverty" actually changes nothing - which was my point. To achieve real change you need to do a lot more than play with statistics. A significant factor at play is that also what poverty means changes over time. Now it also includes things like having a television or having a holiday (material deprivation) or how effectively the resources available to a household meet their needs (social metrics deprivation). What was "basic" when I was born is not what is considered "basic" now.

Why should people working full time jobs need to be topped up by university credit?
This shows how low wages are. Many cant raise a family comfortably even if both parents are working full time.
Average salaries need to be higher.

This!!

I don’t think anyone thinks that care work is entry level, and even if it were it’s still a job that drains you physically, mentally and emotionally and should be rewarded.
I'm assuming you also need to keep up to date with training too.

The point being made before was that NMW should be reserved for entry level jobs and fewer of them.
But what we have now is that a larger portion than usual and expected are AT NMW and the gap between NMW and median wage in the UK has shrunk significantly.

The reality is that a few very short years ago £25,000 was deemed as a rather good salary in my industry. Now it’s literally the NMW!

Sounds about the same as dentists?
Sorry for bundling you up together..
yet finding an “NHS dentist” and having them accept patients it’s literally like winning the lottery.

I'm looking for a new job. I have a degree and there's been some I've looked at that I'd love to apply for but, they have such responsibility (social care worker for teenagers was one) it's also minimum wage.
So I can either travel the city and work with vulnerable kids and have the extra workload outside of my hours for nmw or I can carry on waitressing and washing dishes at the local pub for the same money.

I’m on 32k a year but I get a lot of enhancements so can earn an extra 1k a month if I choose the right shifts so I’m pretty happy!

Housing housing housing.
It's the single biggest reason why we have more children living in poverty now than 30 years ago. Why we have more working people living in poverty than ever before.
It's also one of the key reasons why so many councils are on the brink of insolvency (temp housing costs for people made homeless by landlords pushing up rents without constraint).

Building more houses won't help if all we get are more luxury properties bought primarily as investments and rented out at unaffordable, unregulated, uncapped market rents.

We can't have it both ways. Housing is either fulfilling a basic human right for adequate, safe and appropriate shelter or its part of someone's hedge fund. It can no longer be both.

Pushing up the min wage will do nothing to help this.

My friends daughter is at uni

I needed some admin help so paid her 40 pound an hour for a few weeks work

It felt like the right thing to do but my god she was so ungrateful (she is 20)
Her friends currently earn 10-12 pounds an hour

Anyway lesson learnt
Never again
She can find some min wage work

£53 an hour.

Ignoring bennies / bonuses that’s roughly what I get now and I could not go under that.

I do agree with you that when I look at some of these salaries I am in shock

THIS!

But it appears there is zero political will to do anything about this.

But also when you say with I often do on here it's pointless building more housing unless it's only predominantly social homes with some private homes people shoot me down and then we see endless threads of I don't want to buy a home near social housing.

People whine about the cost of living, but then when solutions could actually help ease the cost of living, they don't like it...

I don't live in the UK now but honestly I could not sustain my current lifestyle if I did

It's not that the minimum wage is that low, it's more that more skilled jobs aren't increasing in the same projection. Minimum wage was for cleaning, factory, retail etc but there are so many positions that actually require more training that are barely above minimum wage nowadays. It's less incentive for some people to bother getting the additional qualifications/training just for a few pence more an hour.

Low skill jobs will still be low skill no matter how long you work there. The issue with minimum wage at present, is that for each position the wage needs to meet the demand. Using my example from before, £12.50 for the dishwasher means the waitress wants £13.50, then the junior chef wants £14.50, restaurant manager £16, same with mid ranking chefs and so on. But to pay all that the price of your meal and drinks go up. What was a £20 a head meal has now become £30. So despite you getting more money, you are no better than before but have created a false sense of inflation.

As I said, we need to reassess what are considered low skill/low pay jobs. We desperately need carers, they provide a job that is physically and mentally difficult. I'd argue they deserve a better rate of pay and more in demand than someone typing up letters all day.

Ask anyone who has had a job in hospitality eg waiting tables, it is physically and mentally extremely hard work, although most people think it is just carrying food. I've worked both sides of the pass and can assure you being a chef is far easier. These should be better paid as they are roles difficult to fill.

Building any type of housing will bring costs down for all types of housing.

For example:

• Build lots of 4-bed detached houses, and it'll bring the price down for that type of house
• Then more people in 3-bed semis will be able to afford to move into them, resulting in more 3-bed semis on the market, bringing the price of them down
• Resulting in more people in 2-bed flats being able to afford to buy them, resulting in more 2-bed flats on the market, bringing the price of them down
• Resulting in more people in rented accommodation being able to afford to buy the flats, resulting in more rented places vacant, bringing the price of them down

It may have more effect if you build certain sizes/tenures, but really building lots and lots of anything is an improvement

Yes, it's £23,795pa on minimum wage for a 40 hour week. That is a take home of £20,652pa or £1721 per month

Personal allowance is only £12,570 and hasn't gone up in ages. It should have done. People on minimum wage should have virtually no tax removed:

Out of £ 1,721 per month, I would have to pay £910 rent and water, £150 for electricity in winter, £30 for broadband. That leaves me £631 for tv licence, insurance, food, toiletries, cleaning materials, prescriptions, birthday presents, entertainment and other sundries. It's extremely tight.

I forgot to include travel costs - about £60 per month in my case

Agree.

And usually someone brings up that "Tesco make billions, they could easily pay an extra £2/hr to their minimum wage staff".

It's probably true, but could they increase every non-NMW employee's wage by 20% as well to recognise their extra responsibilities, etc?

And if they did do that, they could - and would - then choose only better qualified/experienced staff, draining other employers who can't afford to keep their skilled people. Why would you do a high-stress, skilled job when you could work in an unskilled job for more? What effect does that have on the country if skilled people think "sod it, I'll just work in Tesco for more money."

Other businesses would put up prices to afford to keep their staff, which fuels inflation (and of course Tesco would love hiking their prices on the back of that) and it only ever makes things worse for those in comparatively low paid jobs - inflation always hits the poorest hardest - and you're back to square one; just with a devalued currency due to the impact of inflation on the whole economy.

It's a massively complex issue which isn't easily resolved as there needs there to be both a free market to allow the economy to thrive but also regulation to prevent exploitation by the most powerful (richest) employers, too.