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Original poster

Average salary in England - what is it

13 replies

frogwatcher · 20/04/2009 20:22

A friend of mine was shocked and horrified that anybody had to take a salary of £30k or less and is convinced the average salary is higher than this. He believes that the publicised average salary of around 27k inlcudes part time workers and therefore the average full time salary is well over 30k. Is he right. I feel sure it cant be right as I know loads and loads of people who work full time for less than this. I want to tell him he is living in a bubble. Does anybody know the true full time average salary? I tried to google it with little success.

OP posts:

ClaireDeLoon · 20/04/2009 20:24

He could be coloured by where he lives? Or what he does? I always assumed it was full time salary but like I say it is just an assumption.

saintlydamemrsturnip · 20/04/2009 20:24

No it's far lower. Hang on will google

willowthewispa · 20/04/2009 20:25

From this it looks like the median is just under £25k

www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=285

twinsetandpearls · 20/04/2009 20:26

I think life is hard with a salary below 30K. As Clare says it does depend where you love. When I lived in Lancashire £30K was a very good salary ayt a guess I would say the average wage in my town was about 16K.

Original poster

frogwatcher · 20/04/2009 20:26

He works in farming and lives in SE. I did try to google it first - honest.

OP posts:

saintlydamemrsturnip · 20/04/2009 20:28

oh I was about to post the same as willow - it gives the median which is probably more relevant that the mean.

Daisymoosteiner · 20/04/2009 20:28

No, the figure of £27K is for full time, male workers ( that sex should make a difference!) and is the median rather than the mean, which is a more meaningful measure as it takes into account the outliers at both ends. You can see more here

willowthewispa · 20/04/2009 20:29

That's for full time earnings by the way - "The results of the 2008 ASHE show that median weekly pay for full-time employees in the UK grew by 4.6 per cent in the year to April 2008 to reach £479. Median earnings of full-time male employees was £521 per week in April 2008; for women the median was £412."

Minimum wage is under £12k full time. To be honest, I don't know many people who earn over £30k.

HeadFairy · 20/04/2009 20:31

That reminds me of the survey the Guardian did, asking city lawyers all sorts of things including how much they thought the average salary was. All of them thought it was higher than £40k as they couldn't conceive of anyone living on less

Original poster

frogwatcher · 20/04/2009 20:38

Thank you all. I knew I was right. A lot of my friends are teachers, police officers, working in the environment etc. And I am fairly sure that most of them are on just over 30k after many years of experience, training and promotions. I think he was having a bit of a dig at me at my lack of promotions and poor salary. He reckons that his tractor drivers earn more than 30k but then they do work hard and long hours.

OP posts:

ClaireDeLoon · 20/04/2009 20:45

Not much of a friend of he was having a dig like you suspect frogwatcher

twinsetandpearls · 20/04/2009 20:47

I can believe that tbh I know there are forklift truck drivers who earn what I do as a teacher by doing lots of overtime. But I would imagine that they don't know as overtime is scarce.

I would rather earn a modest salary and have a good pemsion and as close as you can get to real job security.

Original poster

frogwatcher · 20/04/2009 21:16

Clairedeloon - thats what I thought. And it was just after I had spent ages helping him do a job for free too and had really gone out of my way to help. Hes actually the partner of a good friend of mine but I do like him. It does make me realise how poorly jobs like teaching, local gov, police etc are paid though if he thinks 30k is low. But twinset you are right too. At the end of the day, its all about doing a job you enjoy and security if its important to you - not money (although a good salary would help). It does make me feel a bit shite though - I need an MSc to do my job and yet it doesnt earn much at all. But I know I am not alone in that, and I suppose its just a bit of paper. It just seems to me at the moment that a lot of the best paid jobs are those where you left school and did an apprentice-ship such as plumbing, building etc. Unless you went into specific roles such as medicine, law, finance to name a few, education seems a bit of a waste of time (in money terms). He also believed that everybody could progress to earn £50k plus by climbing the ladder to middle management but I know thats not right for a fact. There are lots of jobs where only the top one or two people earn that, and middle management earn significantly less.

OP posts:

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