Has the economy affected what your are paid/the amount of your pay rise/ the rate that is charged for your services?

[Earlybird]

We all know from the constant media barrage, and from our own budgets, that money is a big issue these days and there is general belt-tightening all around.

Curious to know how you (as an employer and/or employee), and your company have addressed the issue of pay rises, bonuses, rates charged per project, or hourly rates? Are freelancers/independents/self employed making concessions in the amounts charged for projects? Are people generally asking for/receiving basic inflationary increases?

If you work for a corporation/firm, has your company changed how your time is charged out to clients? If so, has that change translated to your own pay packet?

I work for a solicitors firm and my charge out rate has just increased from £175 per hour to £200 per hour. So far none of the clients has said anything.

My salary only ever seems to go up in line with the RPI, but I do get bonuses if I exceed my billing target.

Interesting mumblechum.

Of course, everything costs more these days so it follows that an increase is appropriate, and perhaps necessary. However, because everything costs more (and some - many? - are feeling the pinch), I wonder about the wisdom of increasing rates/asking for a fee increase etc. in the current economy.

In January, a company I've done business with in the past, increased their hourly fee from £95 an hour to £125 an hour. Their justification for such a large increase? 'We've not raised our rates in the past few years, but have now found it necessary to do so due to increased costs of doing business/petrol, etc.'. My immediate reaction is that in future I will drastically curtail my use of their services because they're simply too expensive. I suspect that sort of scenario is happening elsewhere - people/companies need to charge higher fees, but are losing volume because of those increases.

I am a contractor so am v aware that in the current climate any company could say "all contractors out" as contractors are more expensive than perm staff and it's an easy way to save money quickly. It hasn't happened yet luckily.

However, the co I am workign for atm haven't been affected so far and I have a contract agreed until the end of November. I just negotiated a reasonable rate increase on my daily rate too as my contract was up for renewal. So I hven't put my price down, on the contrary.

Pay rises here were 2/5 - 3% mostly. Some redundancies but due to re org rather than trading conditions.

www - isn't it true though that contractors are actually less expensive because the company pays only their rate, but no additional 'staff member' expenses such as pension contributions, maternity pay, private health care, etc?

Well i'm a teacher so my pay will go up below rate of inflation for the good of the economy. This is because giving public sector workers a pay increase that keeps pace with inflation would cause more inflation and not because Gordon Brown spent all his money nationalising Northern Rock

I got 1.75% this year

Mumbechum, part of me wants to scream WHY do you earn £175 or even £100 an hour when other degree graduates and exhausted grafters earn £8, £7 or £6 pound an hour. But barristers and solicitors have always leeched from society so the true question is HOW CAN this government stop the 10p tax rate for people of £6,000 (teaching assistants, library assistants, nursing auxilaries and many more hard working people who go home exhausted. Scottish lawyers, scottish lawmakers, scottish prime minister scottish robbers. Agree of disagree ?

We are suffering because my husband earns in sterling and we spend in Euros but I suppose what goes around comes around as it did work in our favour up until recently.

No. I got 3% ( I think) but because I only work one day a week, tax has taken all but £1 of my pay rise

Disagree thank you nearlybonkers, and take extreme exception.

nb why scottish issue? surely 10p tax affected scottish teaching assts etc? Also i don't think the issue is why solicitors earn so much but why other graduates earn so little?

nearlybonkers, are you blaming everything on the Scots?

I'm a TA and I got my payslip today. Normal take home is £626 per month. Today it was £600

It's the equivalent of working one morning per month unpaid now.

Why did he do it?

I know several builders who have been laid off this last week and was talking to another one today, who said people were putting off jobs now.
In our town there is a big shop which announced closure last week (its a sainsburys) and one Estate Agent has gone overnight, yesterday.I've also heard rumours of another 3 shops to close, one of which is a national chain. The local free papers were all closed down last week by the Trinity Mirror group as well for the wider county area.
Seems there is a belt tightening going on.

Nearlybonkers, that sort of primitive communist impulse is, IME, complete bullshit.

Everybody I know who bills over 175 quid an hour has an excellent degree (let's not kid ourselves that all graduates are equal), a highly specialist skill and at least a decade of working like a galley slave behind them. You can go "boo hoo teachers don't get paid 100 quid an hour" but I've never seen a teacher routinely still in the office at 1am on a Sunday morning.

And I really don't see what the Scots have to do with anything.

i'm a sahm so didn't get a payrise Unless a second dc counts .

But DH got £500 as he has for the last 3yrs. His company have only been giving a tolken payrise as they have had the money go give everyone a 3% payrise.

My income is indirectly linked to how the financial markets perform, and I must propose any salary increases. Even though it is true that everything costs more today than it did a year ago, the market performance has been dire. It doesn't seem right to ask for a higher rate somehow - but don't want to set a precedent for future years, or be too noble...

I was hoping to ascertain what others (who set their own rates) have done.

Ahem, nearly bonkers, do you not understand the difference between a charge out rate and salary?

My charge out rate is £200 per hour but my salary's only £30 an hour.

So less of the leeching you cheeky mare.

Well in 2003 I charged £3 now I charge £3.50 so it's gone up by 11.6% over 5 yrs so an average of 2.3% a year

But Personally I think it's very low - but It's all the market will allow

Yet my staff get regualar payrises - based on the minimum wage which is p from 5.52 to 5.77 in Oct which is 4.5% - which is hard to justify & in 2003 it was about £4.80 (I Think?) so that has gone up by 20%

Dh is a public sector worker, so yes we're affected by the economy. ATM they're being offered 2.5%, so in RL terms we'll be getting a pay cut this year what with that and with losing the 10% tax band. Luckily DD will be starting school full time this september so I can look for a second job.

Actually, rethinking this, the public sector gets minimal (below or at inflation) payrises regardless of how well the economy's doing so ignore me

Earlybird, yes that's true to an extent re overhead costs, I'd usually x 1.5 on top of salary to calculate overhead costs.

I don't think you should be remotely noble and I think it's dangerous to set a precedent of no pay rise so I think you should ask for it but with good rationale. Or can you get offered something else at more money and use it to negotiate?

interesting thing just sent to me from hays interims are in a good position according to this.

Sorry Mumblechum I did think you were saying you earn £175 per hour. Sorry to all Scottish people as well, but many southerners are saying the money has been heading north, jumping over Yorkshire and going straight to Scotland.

It is always wrong to generalize about any group of the population: by profession or by nationality, BUT it did get you all talking. I'm thinking of applying to be a shock jock on my local radio. I still think a labour government who makes a 10p tax rate to help the poorly paid and then removes it can no longer be considered the defenders of the poor. Just when we need a pay rise those of us with useless degrees, part time & poorly paid menial work have had a pay cut. But I don't believe Eton educated Boris will care a fig either, do you?

yeah WWW Candidates actually read the crap we send them

I spend hours of my week writing crappy eshots only to KNOW noone bloody reads them

May I ask are you in the finance sector?? As What you say I agree with. I work for Hays and only deal with interims and qualified accountants, I am finding I am able to charge clients far higher than this time last year. There could be 2 reasons for this though

1. candidate shortage - however there is always a shortage of GOOD candidates, atm there seems a real dearth of newly qual ambitious candidates loking for new roles though.
2. I am demanding more ££ from my clients as I have been at Hays for longer and feel more confident of my ability/worth in the market. I routinely charge my clinets more than other agencies, amd I freely admit that to my clients. HOWEVER I have the best candidiates who are better screened than other agencies and can do the job better

what money would that be exactly?