Will everyone be on it soon?

[AGreenBanana927]

Minimum wage going up by nearly 7% in April and past few years have seen some large increases in percentage (rightly so) but myself and friends we arent getting that much and the gap between my wage and min wage is getting closer and closer when wealth inequality getting worse

AIBU that soon a lot of jobs will just be on min wage soon and that the UK actually needs a maximum wage?

Except most minimum wage jobs will just get rid of you. Supermarkets and shops go through loads of staff - if you take the piss, they won’t tolerate it for long.

So NMW helps everyone, the ones more stressed can now move to less stressful jobs?

If it’s not just about earning more.

Don't forget working in cafes etc...I worked in Sainsbury's cafe and it was the most stressful job I've ever had

"low skilled,manual jobs " are often seen as a cushy alternative.by
many people who feel their own jobs are hard and stressful ,which they may well be .The problem is should Bus Drivers,cleaners ,supermarket staff etc be expected to barely make ends meet and go without? Certainly Professionals Doctors and so on should command a higher wage for their skills.I also wonder what is a maximum wage,and how would it work!

I know plenty of people who make mistakes every single day at work. As long as they’re noticed and corrected, it really doesn’t matter all that much for the most part.

Of course it does depend on the job and the consequences involved though!

If we had a maximum wage, does that include for multimillionaires/billionaires. I'm for that.

I work in engineering and have a lot of responsibility. (Not an engineer)
Sadly though, I also live in the south west where salaries are notoriously low.

When the gap between my pay and NMW lessens I’ll be leaving and moving into a less technical role. My salary is unlikely to increase much at all since we’ve just gone through redundancies & the whole industry is slowing down. There are no similar roles in my entire county as all similar businesses folded late 2024.

We already have a skills gap.

But then it could be dependent on where you live. Here we have roles being advertised at the same ish salary as a decade ago. It’s stifling. And depressing. (A bit like Groundhog Day!)

No, the UK does not need a “maximum wage”.

I think the issue with a maximum wage is it potentially stops people bothering - I mean, if you know you can only ever earn 100k for example, you’re going to take the easiest job possible for that wage - so where’s the incentive to work any harder?

I hope they learned that it's better to hang on to good people by raising their wages on time and keeping them happy, rather then expect to replace anyone with someone better.

Also, someone who is new won't be better right out of the gate. They need time to learn the way things are structured within the company. It takes times before someone has got it figure out enough to be really productive. This is easily six months for most jobs, but where the work is more complicated, a year would be the minimum.

I think that there should be not just one level of minimum wage, but it should be higher in certain circumstances and for certain qualifications. Practicalities would be a minefield though unless it was for things such as unsociable hours.

I'm looking forward to this mass exodus of office workers when they decide to go stack shelves for "less stress". More office jobs for disabled people who cannot do manual labour. And yes, we're just as skilled for it, we just can't get a look in because all these moaners have their bums on the seats. When they leave for Tesco, we'll swoop right in.

And no, you can't have your job back when you realise traditional minimum wage jobs are absolutely not any less stressful.

You can take bus drivers off that list. Round my way trainee bus drivers are on £15 an hour, more than I'd get paid for teaching them as young children as a TA (TAs often get left holding the class). I won't work in schools any more. I'm considering driving, as soon as my kids are old enough to give me flexibility.

If MW catches up with more skilled jobs, then people will leave those skilled jobs to do less stressful jobs. Then wages for the skilled jobs will need to rise otherwise nobody will want to do those jobs.

Round here too, supermarkets look like good jobs now. I used to work in supermarkets before minimum wage came around and they were pretty awful then. I went on to more skilled work which was paid twice as much at the time but nowadays is considered to be minimum wage and is massively overworked now with the endless 'cuts, cuts, cuts' mantra. I wish I had my supermarket job back.

That’s a lot to me! It’s my mortgage and most of my council tax, I would be a lot better off

Back in the real world, an extra £500 is a considerable chunk of money that could quite easily change people’s lives.

It’s not a huge amount of difference between the minimum wage and the average wage.

I work in a council where responsibilities/qualifications are organised through a grading system. I’m the grade above minimum wage so there has to be a difference between my wage and nmw. So it just means the gaps between gradings is getting smaller. There’s about 2k between me and my manager who is two grades above me. My wage has gone up by 5k in 5 years.

That doesn’t mean £500 isn’t an insignificant sum of money.

I doubt anyone would happily lose £500 a month from their wages after all…

I have lots of friends still stuck in retail and the all say it’s worse than it’s been in a long time.

Am I the only person wondering if @faerietales and @itsleviosa have misunderstood? @MidnightPatrol was saying that that £10k over minimum wage results in £500 a month being subtracted from your wages for student loans.

So, £10k a year in theory gives you £833 extra a month, but in practice if you have a student loan, that job only gives you £300 a month. The question then is just how much more stress and responsibility you have to shoulder for that.
I haven't taken extra tax into account, that was just a quick go on a calculator.

I didn’t say it was an insignificant sum of money.

I am demonstrating the decreasing gap between ‘minimum’ and ‘average’ - which is what the thread is about.

Yup, nursery worker here - we don't just play with children all day long! We have to be qualified and keep our CPD up to date and be up to date with early years curriculum. We don't get sick pay either. Love my job but there will come a time within the next year or so where even more nurseries will close because of the NI hike that our employers have got to pay. Parents are continually up in the arms at the cost of childcare but not sure they realise we are basically earning just above the NMW.

@WaryCrow the £10k after tax and student loan is £500 a month net pay.

It will actually be less with the new loans, and the repayment threshold has dropped to £25k and my calculations are based on the Plan 2 loans are from £28k.