What is a good salary these days?

[Gloria1969]

Hi to you all,
I posted on here the other day and now want to get your views on what constitutes a good salary these days.
I am a Programme Manager within the IT sector, working within Local Government. I am seeing a lot of jobs of £60K + but expect these would come with little or no flexibility.
I earn £40K for 4 long days and take Fridays off.
Is there anyone else out there willing to share their work pattern and earnings so that I can stop worrying that I am the poor relation?
I am not greedy but due to government pay freezes I haven't had a payrise in more than 4 years and it hurts.
Please help!

I think you could get more but you will have to be prepared to be v much more flexible (think regular 5 working days a week, be on call some weekends / evenings and some unpaid overtime) and be prepared to do more travelling. As a rough guide comparable London jobs would probably pay a third more than elsewhere but that amount will be swallowed up in more expensive housing, commuting and child care costs.

40k working part time. You have it sweet. I'd be very happy with that and you can easily live very comfortably.

For the job title it does seem to be a bit low in that I am sure if you were prepared to move you could get more.

However you need to factor in experience, job security, location and job flexibility. I have taken pay cuts in the past to get better flexibility as I didn't see the point in earning loads and working myself to an early death.

It also does depends on the area you live, in IT you can get far more working in London but it comes at a price in terms of cost of travelling and housing.

Saying that, it never hurts to ask for a pay rise giving examples of how you are underpaid for the job market or looking around to see what is out there.

I do admin but have a surprising amount of pressure and have had to take on the work of people much higher up with no pay increase.
I earn 14.5k, no pension, no perks only 6 weeks paid maternity leave. It's shit

It's not just the public sector who've had no pay rises for several years, OP.

There are people at my work place that haven't had a pay rise in over 10 years.

I think in terms of the role (senior project management) and the industry (IT) the salary is a little on the low side but that will depend on other factors whether it is massively so, as IT jobs can vary considerably (I work in IT myself).
Are these 60k roles similar in level/team/culture/demands?
What are the unofficial perks of your job? Flexible start and end time, relatively low level stress, etc.
What about the commute to the better paid roles? I increased my salary by a great deal by switching to a job in the city centre (just 10miles away) but the hours are longer as is the daily commute. From what I've seen the "London effect" has less of an impact on salaries than a lot of other careers.
Benefits- pension terms are unlikely to be as good and it is rare to get a decent maternity leave package in private sector IT, also annual leave mightn't be as generous.
Are you managing a large team at the minute, how many reports would you have in a different job?
Also how much do you actually like where you are currently working? I've worked on several different types of organisations over the last few years (both public and private) and the general atmosphere, structure, team mates goes a long way to job satisfaction.