To think it is not that easy to 'get a better job'

[EuclidianGeometryFan]

Seen a few threads lately about people with money issues, and on low wages or minimum wage.
Then some posters say things like 'why haven't you got a promotion in the last X years?' 'Why don't you re-train / upskill?' 'Why don't you get a better job?'

As if anyone stays in a minimum wage job for years just for the fun of it!

The job market is a pyramid - there is not enough room on the higher levels for everyone. Even as you age you can't automatically expect to climb the ladder and move up - the maths don't stack up. Not every field of work has a 'career ladder'.
Some people are stuck on minimum wage or not much more, for life. They may not have the ability or skills or aptitude to re-train or get promoted, let alone the time and energy.

It smacks of blaming the OP for not being ambitious enough. Some posters seem to have no conception of what life and the job market is like for minimum wage workers.

I believe that intelligent, driven people can and should be able to achieve it.

Of course.
But what about the people who are not intelligent, and are too exhausted to be 'driven'?

Quite.
Some people are not capable of anything more.

That is my point (part of my point - the other part is about the pyramid structure).

Unfortunately

them’s the breaks

if you aren’t capable of doing anything more than a minimum wage job for your entire working career… then yes, you’re not going to have a great life in terms of material and finances

Some people a round pegs in square holes job wise, but it is not that easy to find that round hole if you you have financial responsibilities and commitments, retraining often means giving up an income for a while and most people simply don’t have that luxury. Saying “just upskill/retrain/get a better job” is a bit like saying “let them eat cake”.

But someone working full time on a minimum wage job should still be able to afford to live. Some minimum wage / just above minimum wage jobs are really important for society.

Yes, earning more is often the only answer, and helpful suggestions about e.g. moving industries, or finding an evening job, might just be what a person needs.

I was reacting to some posts who seemed quite blasé about getting a better job, and came across as critical and blaming people for not earning more.

A single person on minimum wage used to be able to afford to live. The cost of housing and living going up and up now means they cant.
That is not their fault and some people simply can not retrain in something or upskill. How is someone on min wage with no money left over at the end of the month meant to pay for courses?
Not everyone has family around them to support them either.

I think just as bad as "get a better job" is "do more hours" or "get a second job" when someone is already working 50+ hours to make ends meet. What happened to a work life balance?

I’m not unskilled, I have a degree but there’s no clear career progression from where I am. Most jobs around me are low paid but I can’t afford to move
I also don’t know what other jobs I can do, and the ones I look at are asking for 2-5 years of experience
also have health issues which leave me with fatigue and need to stick to a short commute

You do it self study after they’ve gone to bed, or a cut off time say 8pm. Getting up at 5am to do an hour close to exam periods. It’s not fun but it’s not forever. It also doesn’t have to be the 6-8 years for a degree, there are many professional qualifications that can be covered as self study that don’t include a degree in terms of cost or timing.
I’m just coming out the other side of my qualification and it’s been super hard but it’s been financially worth it in the end. My DD is of an age she understands why I’m doing it and I try to make the most of the time we spend together.

Which is fundamentally wrong. The people who post here in desperation (and you'd have to be desperate to lay your life open to critique by some of the people who post on here!) are not looking for what many would term 'a great life', merely to keep a reasonable standard of roof over their head, pay their bills and feed their children without resorting to the food bank. Which when you're working in a job needed by your society, because someone has to care for the elderly, clean, staff shops, labour in construction, is surely the least you can expect. It'd completely unfeasible for society if the only means for people to have the standard of living that enables them to meet their essentials and have some sort of pleasure from their existence is to move out of these type of jobs, because there's not enough of the better ones to go round, and someone needs to do the low paid ones. The answer isn't for everyone to 'better' themselves by leaving their situation, but for the situation they are in to be made better.

Full time NMW at 37.5h/week gives you £1730 net per month.
If it's a couple than it's totally liveable wage of £3460 per months for two adults and one child, your childcare would be heavily subsidised. I have no idea about any other possible benefits.

It's much tougher for a single person, rent would be in shared place most likely, but it's still doable. Not life of luxury for sure, but it's a liveable wage still.

ETA: but yes, I agree that NMW should be higher, or possibly personal allowance should be higher. What government could do is to rebalance the books by reducing welfare bill to make UC time limited but increase personal allowance instead so people who are working get more.

They can afford to “live”

what they can’t afford to do is live in a nice area; holiday abroad; drive anything aside from an old very modest car and use sparingly; and will need to shop very very frugally

£1750 full time NMW

so yes they can “live”

Well if they’re like this for their entire life then… well, that’s life!

I do understand what you are saying and I think a lot of minimum wage jobs have absolutely no progression, the issue is I also think a lot of people chose to stay in these jobs because they get comfortable with the familiarity. If you’re a skilled individual and have been in a MW role for several years without progression it’s often time to start looking elsewhere but people don’t want to do that. One of my closer friends is stuck in a MW role with a first class finance degree and she won’t leave because she’s too comfortable there. The management system is one in one out so unless one of them leaves she won’t get a promotion. Moving jobs is scary but I think it would open a lot more doors for people if they recognised they are never going to progress anywhere in their current company.

My DH started off with his cohort in an entry level role 5 years ago and has made great progress quite fast. He met with a few others who started with him the other day and one of them was pretty much on the same salary as when he started. He has spent the last 5 years moving sideways instead of up. Sometimes it’s just a series of bad choices. People forget you need to spend time upskilling all of the time. I understand people don’t want to do this as often it’s hard to get a good work life balance.

I think the issue with this is a lot of 'nice areas' still need a huge number of minimum wage staff to keep them nice. So if they cant live there, how does it work. There's only so far people can commute for minimum wage as commuting costs are high.

I’m qualified and very experienced in my role

im trying to get a better job

age is very much against me and the out of hours that wasn’t a requirement is now expected I just now longer have the energy to do all those hours

it’s not always easy and one thing people rarely think about is confidence, lacking in self belief and confidence is such a struggle for so many people

Full time NMW
£1750 net a month

they can do it

You literally said they couldn't live in a nice area? Or did you mean they could live in a nice area with no holidays/cars etc.

I meant

they don’t need to live in a nice area to work in a nice area 🙄

When rent in a nice area could be well over £1000pm?

My area is not nice at all and rent for a tiny flat is still about £900pm. But people in the low paid jobs still have to live here or those jobs wont get done. Not everyone wants to or can live in houseshares. Would you want to be house sharing in your middle age?

They might be able to afford the bare essentials but it would be a crap life and people in the lowest paid roles deserve to have the nicer things like everyone else does. Otherwise what is the point of living?

Aah. I suppose i think of my area as nice although its described as the affordble/rough bit of my borough, and its a long old way to head somewhere not nice thats cheaper enough to offset commuting costs.

We really, really struggled with recruitment as people cant afford to live here and can get the same nmw job closer to home without the added hassle and cost of a commute. Its a genuine issue.

Apparantly the point of living if you're not privileged is to work as hard as you can to make wealthy people richer and their lives more convenient by doing the stuff they don't want to do.
In your leisure, you can stare at them in awe and admiration and see them as your role models, believing the lie that if you work even harder at making them richer and their lives better, you too could have a nice life.

It's just not possible for everyone to push themselves like your friend has, though. I'm only an averagely mentally strong person and I'd simply have a breakdown if I took as much on as she has managed to. As it is I'm lucky I have a reasonable job but I really struggle to hold it down alongside parenting my one child alone. I just couldn't cope with studying on top of that.

Amazing respect to her but it's not a case of just putting your mind to it, you need to have exceptional fortitude to be able to do what she has done

What government could do is to rebalance the books by reducing welfare bill to make UC time limited but increase personal allowance instead so people who are working get more.

Both of those are truly dreadful ideas!

What on earth would a disabled person do when their 'time limited' UC ran out? Some people are on UC for life, because that is the way it is - they can't work.

Increasing the personal allowance for income tax is a right-wing propaganda idea. Studies have shown it disproportionally benefits the wealthiest:

a personal allowance increase to £12,500 would give £18 a year to households in the bottom 10% and £203 to households in the top 10%

Personal Tax Allowance: How an Increase Widens Inequality - Equality Trust

This is an old article as the allowance for 24/25 is 12570, but the maths remains true - increasing the personal allowance benefits the rich the most.

What would be better is to reduce the tax rate from 20% to say 15% for those earning under £28k (NMW is about £25.4k for 40 hr week), and increase the rates and/or thresholds for the higher earners. (Perhaps a 50% or 60% rate for those earning over £200k? Tax policy for high earners is complicated, balancing the amount raised against the risk of emigration.)

The personal allowance is not the issue, the % rate is the issue.

Half the threads on here “I’m struggling on 50-100k”
the other half “min wage is £1750 per month, of course they can live off it”