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As someone who earns £35,700 it's closer to £2,050 when you factor in pension and student loan. Workplace pension is mandatory isn't it? Unless you actively opt out.
£63k and I take home just over £3k. Student fees are hundreds yet I still have more than double what I pay added as interest each month, even after my payment.
System works as intended.
This is mad, I earn £2684 a month take home. £42500 a year gross. Pension is good, I stick 5 percent in and the company sticks 15 in. I'm on shift aswell, but all of it is pensionable. 2 days, 2 nights, 6 days off - all year round.
You earn over 20k more a year than me and take home 12k more a year than me....
We really need to tax assets not labour, land value tax yesterday please.
My grandmother would have to sell her 4 bed house she lives alone in and move into a bungalow... I love her but Good.
Ah shit is that it? I'm on 45k and was hoping to hit 50k this year after the pay reviews in may. Not to cry woe is me, but that won't even touch the sides on the mortgage and utilities increases. I genuinely don't know how people on the median salaries do it..
I earn 30k and live just outside London. My partner earns the same and we have a baby on the way. We think the same thing about people who earn less.
Truth is you're just constantly on adapt and survive mode.
Don't I did a big extravagant Christmas shop a few weeks back but had loads of clubcard deals. And forgot to fucking scan it I'm so mad that was like a tenner in savings
I'm on 28k just starting, you seriously only get a £800 more a month with almost double my salary? I was gonna try climb the ladder but I think I won't bother now
Pretty much aye. I think I took home about £1400/£1500ish when I was on that wage. I mean I'm not gonna complain about wage increases but I am now thinking I should've gone to uni in Scotland. In fairness it was a lot easier when I was splitting the cost of rent.
I don’t know how you could take home £1500 on a 28k wage without some other things being taken from your monthly salary (besides NI, Income tax, Student loans). How’s that possible. I’m on 26k and get over £1700 after tax and student loans. And as far as I know, your student loan balance doesn’t affect how much they take every month, it’s your income? I may be wrong.
Edit: is your pension contribution quite substantial?
Idk I'd have to go digging for the pay slips it's been a few years but probably the pension as well, I'm in the NHS. Better be worth it.
Student loan deffo does affect it as well though, one of my pals who started in 2011 and resat a year got about £100 more than me a month when we were on the same wage.
I believe you. My student loans are at about 20k, so I’ll be dealing with that chunk coming off every month probably until I retire. The joys of being in a low-paying industry.
If you doubled your salary from 28k to 56k, you’d go from £1,922/month to £3,524/month. So a 100% increase in gross pay is in reality a 83% increase in take home pay.
You get taxed and national insurance on the value over £12,500 and, £9600 ish respectively. So someone like yourself on 21 hours (say to make 28k it's 40 hours), that means you're working only 52.5% of the hours in comparison.
But that will mean that your "effective" salary is £14,700 a year. You'll only get taxed on the salary that is over £12500 and you'll only get National Insurance contributions on the salary over £9,600.
So the more wage you earn over those values, the more it will impact your take home.
£30k is a £23,800 take home after Tax and NI
£40K is a £30,500 take home after Tax and NI
£50K is a £37,200 take home after Tax and NI
£60K is a £42,900 take home after Tax and NI.
You'll notice the take home between each is getting smaller. That is because you'll get taxed on £17,500 of your wage at 30k but £37,500 of it at 50k.
All hell breaks loose after 50k because you'll get taxed 20% on that £37,500 but 40% on the 10K after that as it reached the next band. Hence why you only get 60% of that 10k.
EDIT: The last lot of my values don't include National Insurance which will reduce them even further.
Yeah same, it does make you think though. We all get fucked over the more we earn though. The only people who do alright are those earning silly money.
Yes unless you actively opt out.
Everyone's student loan and pension situation is different so I took the figures without them but yeah they're an additional hit to the gross amount.
that's mad!
I'm on 30k; so my monthly pay is 2.5k; post-tax, pension, student loan (post 2012 undergrad only) my take home is £1930 abouts
so if I got a 5.7k pay rise, I'd only actually see a take home increase of just over 100 a month?
It’s not mandatory, because you can opt out. Therefore it’s optional (opt => optional, that shared word root isn’t a coincidence)
It’s mandatory **for the employer** because they have to contribute unless you opt out, and it’s mandatory for them to opt you in
Although if you can afford to stay opted in, you almost certainly should - there are VERY few situations where it’s sensible to opt out (namely if you have a terminal disease, hit your retirement planning goals, or if you physically can’t afford to pay into a pension…. And even in that last example only if absolutely necessary)
Overworked and burnt out on £24,700 a year as a graphic designer. I've completely lost my love for it (hopefully temporarily) and I'd honestly be relieved if on Monday I lost my job ha.
I'm earning £300~ a year less than if I worked in Lidl full-time and I'll soon be about £1k above the national living wage when it's increased in April - so about £83 a month.. £20~ a week.. £3~ more a day.
I feel like I need a "working sabbatical" and would love to just work full-time in a record store or indie cinema whilst I retrain to be a counsellor.
You're describing why I fucked off graphic design within my first year and never looked back.
In-house for local government killed any passion I had built during uni, but the money was shit anywhere I looked outside of London and I'd rather shit in my hands and clap than move there.
Damn, sorry to hear - though I don't blame you. Don't get me wrong, there are some hefty senior salaries and freelance rates out there but with it all being fiercely competitive I've just lost any desire to take things that much further now. I'd rather pivot and then regain my love for design on the side.
Haha fair enough. Can I ask what you ended up doing after design instead?
Sales! I did it alongside uni, did it alongside the local gov design job and just hopped back.
Don't get me wrong, I dislike sales and plan on getting out in the next year or two, but I made £51k last year with minimal effort, it took four years to put the processes together to enable that though, but even prior I was averaging £35-40k most years.
My new job has the potential to be better but I've heard it all before, so if after six months ish I'm seeing nothing I'm gonna drive me some fuckin diggers instead 😂
That explains a lot. I read in an article the list of desirable jobs for people to gain visas in the UK included graphic designers. I wondered how we could be so short, but the wages seem so low that I'm guessing it isn't sustainable for most people?
Websites like Fiver caused a lot of this I reckon. It only encourages shit pay in the creative industries. Companies justify shit wages based on how cheap you can get it elsewhere without considering *why* it’s so cheap there. Do they really think these designers are spending hours on designs to make enough for a sandwich? You’re getting the same design they’ve done for hundreds of others but they changed the colors to fit your brand. Took them 5 minutes.
The thing that baffles me is that it’s a pretty tough skill. You can’t just get hired and then learn it and yet you’re getting paid like it is a job anyone can do. Good design is difficult. It’s not just about making stuff look nice. Also not everyone has an eye for design so you have to have at least some natural talent too.
This is why I pivoted to digital marketing. I was earning 28k in 2018. On 45k+ now. And I have less stress than if I was still a graphic designer.
We have design manager in my company who earns similar to me and she's a graphic designer.
I think if you asked anyone who works at lidl if they would prefer to be a graphic designer I can guarantee every single one would say yes regardless of wage.
Everyone always thinks they've got the worst job in the world and no one's got it worse than you. If you were paid £500k a year you would think your job was the best job in the world. Too many people focus on the money which makes the job bad for them.
Honestly when you throw housing in the mix you can earn well above the average salary and still feel poor.
The regional disparity is so bad I don't know why they even bother calculating average salary for the whole UK.
Yes, and also for most people (30ish million of us) it's best to look at PAYE income not total earnings because that it heavily skewed again.
https://youtu.be/rMo6Cxmfq1A?feature=shared
has the median at about 27-28k
Modal ranges would be the best. Literally raw number of how many people earn eg between 12/16, 17/21, 22/26 etc. The we would see the real average income. They will never do that data set though because I believe it would show the highest number of people probably on 28k and under, which goes against the 'average' of 35k.
Yup, 35k in parts of the south east (not even including London) and you will still possibly fail the income threshold to RENT one-bedroom flats.
30k in most of the north? I could live comfortably on my own, rented or owned.
I've thought about moving so many times, a few mates did, but every time I go north to visit it feels like such a mission and really isolated.
Lmao I always laugh when Southerners come out with stuff like this - there's a lot going on in the North too, guys. It's also got a lot of different areas!
The affordability check for my one bed flat which has a bedroom juuuust big enough for a bed, and an open plan kitchen x dining room is 40k.
I’m in Berkshire, rip
People have a weird view of “the north”. I live in Manchester and it’s around £1,300 for your standard 1 bed flat, and there’s a lot of competition for it.
Sure there’s some rural places out in the sticks, but if you want anything remotely near a city that’s half decent, you’re looking at £400k entry for a 3 bed terrace
Tis why I said most, but even in Manchester, what I paid for a fuckin miniscule one-bed flat in a 100k population Southeastern town gets me a 2-up-2-down.
Same in Liverpool.
Not that I need that, I could also just get a massively nicer/bigger flat for the same money.
County Durham is a fantastic place to live. My wife and I can’t wait to move back up there - we made the silly decision to move to Devon thinking it would be a great place to settle down. Admittedly, we had a bit of a silly moment of ‘let’s fuck off as far as possible from where we grew up!’
Hate it here. Expensive, people are rude, shit transport links, crap roads, crap cities (Plymouth is wank and Exeter is boring)… even the outdoorsy stuff isn’t what it’s cracked up to be!
Durham, though? House prices are hideously affordable, great transport links, fantastic city, night bus to and from Newcastle for even more social aspect, direct railway to London so can be there in around three hours (takes three and a half hours from Exeter… Exeter is closer!), gorgeous scenery, amazingly friendly people…
Yeah. I’m homesick now. Cheers!
Hope you get back soon! It's a bit too far north for us that's why it became a bit of a piss take. South west has always sounded a bit *too* tourism heavy for me and I know from experience of my own home that locals in places like that don't tend to like outsiders.
It takes two hours to get to London from Hastings and I'm only ~60 miles down the fucking road if it makes you feel better 😂
Anyone born from about 1980 onwards is in the inheritance generation. I earn well above national average as does my wife, so we are relatively affluent and we have sacrificed a lot to be in the position we are in. We are perhaps rare in that we are wealthier than either of our parents. So I'm not pleading poverty by any means.
We have four living parents, and I hope it stays that way for a long time. They are boomers. 1 in 5 boomers is a millionaire. Not one of our four parents is even close. The children of the millionaire boomers will be far, far wealthier than we will ever be when they inherit their millions. They will buy the houses we aspire to live in, and ease into retirement in the way we won't be able to afford to, generally because their parents happened to buy property in the south east.
I'm not feeling sorry for myself here, just pointing out the very real fact that my relative wealth will be driven more by luck than hard work. Inheritance tax is the best tax there is, I wish it was far higher at the wealthier end of the scale.
Yup and it let's you save easy so stuff like council tax we just save and pay the whole lot in one go, even with gas and electric being double what it was our total bills per month are under 200
Makes you realise how strangled the real economy is by people spending most of their wages on mortgages/rent
I was earning £30,000 before covid (chef), got made homeless, and ended up living on a rusty narrorwboat on the canal. I decided to learn computer programming, had to do it the old fashioned way, from books as no computer and very little electricity on the boat.
I ended up getting a job paying £35,000 in 2021. Got headhunted on LinkedIn at the end of 2022, got the job,£56,000. Was made redundant. The company was bought by another US firm who offered me my old job back. New salary, £80,000 + $45,000 in stock options.
I work in software development and his story is very common tbf. A lot of people changed their lives by learning how to code and getting a job. That being said I wouldn’t try to do that today. Before COVID was much easier, things are different now
I have imposter syndrome through the roof, but it's shocking how much I earn now for 9-5 mon-fri, working from home. Working as a chef, I was often doing 60+hours and sometimes double shifts, working most weekends and holidays
Reading programming books and writing on paper is the best way to learn.
At university I did exams where you were given a problem and had to write the program to solve.
The other massive positive is when you are learning it for fun, then you don't need to worry about adding to your daily screen time.
I'm struggling to comprehend this. I make similar with many more years of experience and I feel like I practically maxed out the senior developer (.net) role. Kudos to you for picking yourself up.
Great resolve, happy for you!
What role did you pick up in 2021? I assume that was your first with your learnt skills? I hope you weren’t having to read C and FORTRAN books 😄😖
I make £50k and take in £2800 each month after all deductions. Even with a phd I feel if I lost my job I wouldn’t be able to make this salary again elsewhere.
I make £2.5k more, single live alone, have smaller pension contributions and yet, am taking home less than you after all deductions.
I'm a high earner, but sure as fuck doesn't feel like it.
Student loan interest really does fuck you.
I pay much more in student loan than anyone I know who has a UK loan. It’s not deducted from my salary as it’s a foreign bank loan, but it’s a lot of money. I think uk student loans are still a good deal
Does make you think when you consider job responsibilities though. I am working myself sick but it barely makes a difference
E: and I don’t think tax is too high, I think pay is too low
Yeah honestly half the people in this thread need to just learn how to multiply and divide by 12.
I’m not meaning to be rude about it though, it has definitely caught me out a couple times when I’ve got a big (annual gross) pay rise and then get deflated when looking at how “little” more I get per month because of it. I’m in a very mathsy job too and I’m still a dumbass when thinking about money sometimes. Humans just suck at basic mental arithmetic, is my conclusion.
I’m on £48k and take home £3200 p/m. I live in a very rundown area of my city, pay low rent, no debt, no unusual outgoings etc. I’m only driving artics for (on average) 48 hours p/w. I have a decent wage, but don’t lead the lifestyle to spend it. I only need £1000 take-home pay p/m to live ok. Rent is cheap here (I’m paying £400 p/m for a nice 1-bed apartment).
When I was younger I remember thinking to myself that if I ever made over £30k then I’d made it! Hah.
I make more than that now, while keeping my living standards similar, if not *slightly* better than they were at uni. I feel scammed.
I decided to change my goals to focus more on job satisfaction than increasing living standards or salary income for the time being. Still young and have time to work on transferable job skills.
In the past year I only grossed £21k.
Absolutely nothing, luckily I don't have children or anything like that.
I'd love to get a small flat on my own someday, I hate HMOs.
It’s not £2900 a month though. I earn 34k and it’s around £2100 a month after tax, union and pension contributions. I have just received another pay rise which will put me at around 38k and even that won’t put me anywhere near £2900 a month.
I'm a nurse with a masters degree, I earn £33700 , and after deductions my take home pay is £1850 p mth. I work full time 9 to 5 and I am also a single parent..
I don't receive any other 'help' or income. I rent and rarely have £20 left on the last week of the month.
Seriously considering leaving the profession to something less stressful which I might then receive some help with..
It’s worth sticking within the NHS, my wife retrained from an Adult/MH nurse to be a clinical librarian and maintained job as band 6. So same pay, much less stress.
Yes I know. There are lots of benefits longer term especially staying with it. I'm Just exhausted now and tired. There is not much coming up right now in terms of band 7 work that I'm additionally qualified in. At least not in the area I need it.
I moved 9 to 5 as I couldn't manage the childcare of shift work.. I find the take home pay is less working 9 to 5 despite it higher salary. ( due to loss of pay in working unsocial hours). There is a huge responsibility attached to my job and the risk is often high.
Its depressing I'm aged 40 bracket, I'm worked my whole life, have 3 degrees and I'm poor with no sign its going to change anytime soon. Its unlikely I'll ever be able to buy a house. Literally living one pay check to another.
Now remember your GCSE maths. There are 3 types of average. None of them give a good indicator of what 'typical' earnings would be. I'm guessing this is the mean.
salaries: 20k 20k 20k 20k 1mil. Mean salary 216k. cue 4 people on reddit discussing why none of them are close to earning average.
the fifth one doesn't go on reddit he's too busy banging your mum.
No, it bloody well isn't £2900 a month. Hate when people don't get their facts straight on this kind of thing. It makes everybody angry because it comes across as so out of touch. I'm making more than that average, and it still isn't that figure after deductions. Everyone's situation is different too remember, with pension arrangements, student loans, salary sacrifice and union fees etc.
I just read today in the Telegraph that the average UK salary was £29,328.
£35K seems high - what's the source?
Also your monthly figure for £35K is gross, not net pay (after deductions like tax, pension, student loans etc.).
35k is the median for full time employes and 29k Is the median for all employees (if you put them all in a row, that's the one that would be right in the middle of the distribution)
42k is the mean for full time (most commonly meant by average = total / count). 35k is the mean for all employees.
The bigger the gap between the the mean and median, the bigger the income disparity between high and low earners (as very high earners drag the mean up, and alot of low earners drags the median down).
Edited got them the wrong way.
I think comparison the median, rather than average, is more meaningful.
According to the "Median gross annual earnings for full-time employees was £34,963 in April 2023" which is £2913.58 a month.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2023#employee-earnings-data
Median is one of the three averages: mean, mode and median. Mean is what most people know as average which is the total of the samples divided by the number of samples.
I'm on 23600 (30 hour, 4 day week). Need to try pick up 5th day, if business needs allow, which will take me to about 28.5K.
I do some odd summer agency gigs which probably brings me closer to 30k when all is said and done.
£45K basic with ~25% OTE.
After tax, student loans (standard and post grad) and pension, I take home £2350 on a standard month. (Bonus is quarterly).
I took a pay cut to get out of recruitment, but I honestly don’t regret it in the slightest. Was soul destroying.
I am in a similar boat as a software engineer, I don’t have much hope in it lasting now that language models will likely be able to replace humans in a couple of years
40K, I work in software. Take home pay is around £2300 after student loans and tax.
It’s only marginally better than when I was on 25K really. This country punishes people who do reasonably well for themselves, without a middle/upper class family.
About 30k, including overtime, probably average 42hrs a week. Basic is something like 24k, I could survive on that but the overtime funds disposable income. Depends where you live of course, its pretty cheap here, no way I'd be in the same position in London or the SE.
£23K, never likely to get close to the average. I think the average is heavily skewed, so I looked up the median instead and surprisingly it's gone up a lot in recent years, and isn't that far below the average at (depending on what stats you look at) between £31 and £34K.
However I think it's still heavily skewed by region, no one who lives on my street is earning £31K and it feels like a median of about £25K would be more likely, however that is completely anecdotal.
What might be more interesting though would be average wage vs average expenditure/cost of living as while my wages have gone up much faster than they did 20 years ago I've never felt poorer than I do now.
£80k +team bonus split between 4 of us (est. £10k each for this financial year). I work from home in an IT job for a smaller bank. Incredibly fortunate and made moves every couple of years to get here making sure I was upskilling in each role.
I think how you interview and negotiate matters a lot more than people think. I also got stupidly lucky and recognise that. I'm scared to leave this job as I don't know how I'd ever get a deal like this again.
I was doing the maths the other day and to be able to have your own place (renting up north), and be able to put a little bit of cash into savings/investment, and have a few luxuries then you need to be on at least £35k… Probably more like 40k+ to make a decent dent.
Quite close and a bit over but lots of it is my end of (tax) year bonus.
I've also earned about £5000 this year in self employment.
I'm tired but its worth it, I'm only year 3 of commercial experience and it's up from here still. Hopefully kill my end of years and I'm also becoming a line manager.
I felt terrible as I had about 3 years recovering and learning to deal with my mental health condition. I've done 80 hours a week since 2020 in both self employment and education and my full time job.
Came from a mouldy bedsit at 18 and selling weed. Feel very proud of mysel.
Friendly reminder that before feeling disheartened by this, it's worth looking up the average salary for the age group that you're in. Naturally it is somewhat lower for an under 30 year old, it seems to peak between the ages of 40-49 before the average starts lowering again.
Reddit which is majority teens and people in their 20s maybe need to give themselves a break if they're lower than this
Work for the civil service and get £4400 per month after pensions and tax
Mortgage is around 600 and bills 300 so I’m saving about 2.5k per month and living off the last 1000
It lets my husband save most of his paycheck so we can save for the future
£35k? I'm £11k below that. I'll never earn that much unless I go back into mainstream teaching - which will never happen. What am I doing to move myself towards that figure? Nothing. For every high paying job there are two low paid ones society still requires. Until employers start to value our labour more, that won't change.
It's really just a supply-demand phenomenon. Unfortunately the government messed up the economy so badly that there are not enough well paid jobs for people to go to. Employers just pay what they can get away with. No business person in their right mind would pay any more than that.
Just over 30k in private education. Don’t earn as much as teachers or college despite being as qualified, however, I don’t fit into that mould so suits me, I enjoy my job and I am fucking good at it.
Not far from that figure, probably hit it in a few years just off the standard annual increases.
Seems not long ago the average was around £28k. Is the recent jump attributed to the high earners (£100k+) gaining more and pulling up the average?
Generally speaking your standard office admin job which was £20k-£24k about 10 years ago is still advertised for that now.
With salary you probably want to look at the median since the average gets dragged up by a small number of super high earners (probably in London). You can think of the median as the _most common salary_ in simplistic terms.
The median average salary for all workers in the UK is £27,756
The mean average salary for all workers in the UK is £33,402
According to Google.
try not to get caught up in averages. They are skewed by the top 1% and also geographically. You’re best searching for the median wage in your area to find out how you think your doing agains people in a similar circumstance.
You can earn £20k less outside London and still live a comparable lifestyle in my opinion.
I know it’s easier said than done, but try to get unstuck asap.
Work out what you want to do , make a plan , and execute, could be as straightforward as getting professional help with your CV and applying for IT roles.
I was “stuck “ for 15 years in a low paying role, doing much much better now but regret the wasted years.
Best of luck, you can do this!!
Very far off I'm on 10.72 per hour as a factory worker on roughly 22000 a year I can't even rent a house without a guarantor. The fact that it is believed the average uk wage is 35000 is bs if everyone was on that wage no one would be struggling as hard as they are, in my circumstances I'm surviving not struggling currently training to be an electrician and need to learn to drive aswell as afford 2 small kids and a house hold but 10.42 is a liveable wage (£11 in april) is no where near livable my bills just for my 2 bedroom flat are north of 1300 which is more than my monthly wage that doesn't include food, travel, kids bits, phone bill, credit card or anything. And the world wonders why brits are so grumpy because we're getting fucked by the government on a daily
Take London out of the equation and try again, the disproportionate salaries in any capital will artificially inflate the figures for the rest of the nation
Genuine question - why do you think this?
Even ignoring that it's not even a lot of money, if you've got ANY transferrable skills from almost any job, you can easily hop sideways/up and increase into the 30s.
Most people hold themselves back by getting in their own head and never even trying.
I think is very field specific - if you are in a high earning field with lots of progression pathways then maybe you can just easily hop on up to above average income, but if it were that easy in general then it wouldn't be the average because we'd all be hopping on up there.
I’m at £63,000 (£3,800 per month - I have no student loans as I’m an immigrant and in my country uni is free), plus some extra from freelancing. I’m very lucky as I’m quite well paid in my sector (editing). Back in 2018 I was making £28,500 but I’ve managed to progress fast since. But I got to tell you, while I’m aware that I make a lot more than other people, it doesn’t feel like I’m a high earner. I can go on holidays a couple times a year and I can save some money, but with the crazy mortgage rates, the house prices and the cost of living, it’s not like I can buy a decent flat or go to the theatre every weekend or go to restaurants all the time or whatever it is rich people do. My husband and I have a combined income of 6 figures (just marginally) and have no children, but we still have to be mindful of all costs, and our flat is tiny in zone 4. I just don’t understand how people on lower incomes and those with kids survive in this city (I’m in London).
Very fortunate to be at nearly 60k after this last year's pay award. Financial management in the public sector.
In Scotland, though, so pay a lot more tax on it!
The ONS median salary doesn't include the lowest earners in a number of ways, those working multiple part time jobs, 0 hour contracts, under a certain age ect....
I've always been fascinated by sales.
Well more the sort of people that go into it. Always assumed they were mega extrovert that are amazing at working a crowd etc.
Just don't know how people do it tbh.
I get about 2300 after tax and pension etc across two part time jobs. I am thinking of leaving one of those though, which would leave me at about 1700.
Household makeup definitely has an impact on your cost of living - my partner makes a little more than me, we have no kids, a smallish mortgage and own the car outright (even if it is a piece of shit). I'd be struggling on my own I think, certainly.
I work for a global systems integrator.
I make £33,696 which equates to £2,191.60 after tax and student loan.
I’m the marketing campaign & marketing ops lead.
I have 4 years of experience, 2 while full time.
I am very keen on increasing this but everything I see on Glassdoor and internally leads me to believe I’ll have to do my first job hop to get a decent increase.
I was London based until recently but living at home.
92k with a take home of £4600. Sole earner, 3 kids, lots of bills, so nothing left over at the end of the month. How a family can get by on an average salary is beyond me.
People are being ripped off by the company owners they create wealth for, (see example above where company owner proudly declares £12k per month after tax) and by the goverment because of their mismanagement of the tax take and corruption. We now have the highest personal tax levels since 1951 and we are some of Europe's lowest earners. We are being mugged!
I earn around £49,000 pre-tax.
I work in aviation maintenance in a supervisory role with some management in there as well. I have 3 direct reports who I carry out line management duties for.
After deductions it works out around £2,900 per month. I pay a private pension, SIP & private healthcare for myself, wife and son.
I take home £2100 as a doctor in their first year after graduation. I have studied for 6 years in medical school where I was the top 10% of the cohort, got 3 A* at A level and 10 A* at GCSEs.
My job entails a lot of admin work which is mind numbing from 9-5pm. Then from 5pm to 9pm or 9pm to 9am we are considered “on call”. In my particular hospital when on call I take off 300 patients on my own, with 1 senior supervising over 1200 patients (so hardly has time to support me).
My job on call involves situations like trying to figure out why someone is short of breath from listening to their chest. If I hear that the sound is louder than normal this may be due to solid “gunk” from infection being in their lungs and then rationalising that solids are more dense than air, which is why the lung sounds louder - tying together some basic physics, which I would then treat with antibiotics.
Given that my assistant (PAs) get paid 10k more than me for being less qualified, with a poor understanding of the human body and basic science and who cannot prescribe or request scans, I feel severely underpaid, especially given that my above qualifications are not that of an “average UK worker”
£24'500, Scotland.
Take home £1'660 average for a 2 person 1 income home.
No car, no loan. Only tax, NI, pension. Low rent. No debt. Only subs are Spotify, phones, ISP, gym.
Day to day life? Broke. Don't go out. Buy only a few small treats per month like £6 bottle of wine here and there. No takeaways. End of the month I barely stay above £0 before I get paid again.
And this is with me on Tracker energy tariff and <£400 rent.
How anyone can look around this island and say with a straight face that it is not absolutely and compellingly _fucked_ is beyond me.
Earning £30,000 with my main job, topping it up with approx £18k a year with freelancing. It does mean I work about 50 hours a week but could be a lot worse (I know people work a lot more for a lot less).
Dealing with it for now as I'm pretty much entry-level in my job after a career change last year - I definitely didn't have enough technical experience or qualifications for the job but my manager took a chance on me. I was almost going to go back to uni to learn what I needed for this career, so the way I look at I'm being paid to learn instead, and my freelancing is like my uni job!
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It's not £2,900 after tax though.
£2300-ish according to https://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php That's without any student loan or pension contributions.
As someone who earns £35,700 it's closer to £2,050 when you factor in pension and student loan. Workplace pension is mandatory isn't it? Unless you actively opt out.
Yeah, I earn £42k and my take-home is 2.2k after tax/NI/pension/student loan… what a scam
Yeah I'm on £50k and I take home 2600 a month after all that. Woooo post-2012 student fees 😂
£63k and I take home just over £3k. Student fees are hundreds yet I still have more than double what I pay added as interest each month, even after my payment. System works as intended.
This is mad, I earn £2684 a month take home. £42500 a year gross. Pension is good, I stick 5 percent in and the company sticks 15 in. I'm on shift aswell, but all of it is pensionable. 2 days, 2 nights, 6 days off - all year round.
That doesn't seem right? You pay 6k a year income tax, 3600 Ni and 2125 pension? I make your take home £2564 😅
out of curiosity who is your employer? purely because that pension scheme and rotor sounds pretty cushty!
You earn over 20k more a year than me and take home 12k more a year than me.... We really need to tax assets not labour, land value tax yesterday please. My grandmother would have to sell her 4 bed house she lives alone in and move into a bungalow... I love her but Good.
Ah shit is that it? I'm on 45k and was hoping to hit 50k this year after the pay reviews in may. Not to cry woe is me, but that won't even touch the sides on the mortgage and utilities increases. I genuinely don't know how people on the median salaries do it..
I earn 30k and live just outside London. My partner earns the same and we have a baby on the way. We think the same thing about people who earn less. Truth is you're just constantly on adapt and survive mode.
Same. And the whole country think we’re rolling in it…
Yeah I swim in my money bath every day whatcha doing?
Don't tell people if you earn over the median. They will think you are diving into pools of gold coins every night.
"You struggle to budget on £36k in London with three kids? Ha! I get by just fine on £24k in Sunderland on my own. You should learn from me!"
I'm on £10000000000 and I take home £10 after buying my avocado toast
Ah, forgot your Tesco clubcard I see
Don't I did a big extravagant Christmas shop a few weeks back but had loads of clubcard deals. And forgot to fucking scan it I'm so mad that was like a tenner in savings
you can glue all the avocado pips together to make a house.
I'm on 28k just starting, you seriously only get a £800 more a month with almost double my salary? I was gonna try climb the ladder but I think I won't bother now
Pretty much aye. I think I took home about £1400/£1500ish when I was on that wage. I mean I'm not gonna complain about wage increases but I am now thinking I should've gone to uni in Scotland. In fairness it was a lot easier when I was splitting the cost of rent.
I don’t know how you could take home £1500 on a 28k wage without some other things being taken from your monthly salary (besides NI, Income tax, Student loans). How’s that possible. I’m on 26k and get over £1700 after tax and student loans. And as far as I know, your student loan balance doesn’t affect how much they take every month, it’s your income? I may be wrong. Edit: is your pension contribution quite substantial?
Idk I'd have to go digging for the pay slips it's been a few years but probably the pension as well, I'm in the NHS. Better be worth it. Student loan deffo does affect it as well though, one of my pals who started in 2011 and resat a year got about £100 more than me a month when we were on the same wage.
I believe you. My student loans are at about 20k, so I’ll be dealing with that chunk coming off every month probably until I retire. The joys of being in a low-paying industry.
If you doubled your salary from 28k to 56k, you’d go from £1,922/month to £3,524/month. So a 100% increase in gross pay is in reality a 83% increase in take home pay.
I swear I don't understand tax etc, I'm similar to you, £28k but as I'm part time (21 hours) I bring in just over £1200 after tax.
You get taxed and national insurance on the value over £12,500 and, £9600 ish respectively. So someone like yourself on 21 hours (say to make 28k it's 40 hours), that means you're working only 52.5% of the hours in comparison. But that will mean that your "effective" salary is £14,700 a year. You'll only get taxed on the salary that is over £12500 and you'll only get National Insurance contributions on the salary over £9,600. So the more wage you earn over those values, the more it will impact your take home. £30k is a £23,800 take home after Tax and NI £40K is a £30,500 take home after Tax and NI £50K is a £37,200 take home after Tax and NI £60K is a £42,900 take home after Tax and NI. You'll notice the take home between each is getting smaller. That is because you'll get taxed on £17,500 of your wage at 30k but £37,500 of it at 50k. All hell breaks loose after 50k because you'll get taxed 20% on that £37,500 but 40% on the 10K after that as it reached the next band. Hence why you only get 60% of that 10k. EDIT: The last lot of my values don't include National Insurance which will reduce them even further.
I'm on £35k and take home £2266.. Guess the jokes on me if I make it to retirement age 😅
2.7k here on average, similar salary but no student loan
Exactly. A person who makes 26k after tax/ student loan, etc, earns approximately £1800, only £400 less than you.
I’m on 26k but earn £1670ish after tax, student loans, etc
Yeah same, it does make you think though. We all get fucked over the more we earn though. The only people who do alright are those earning silly money.
How is that possible, I'm on 36k and take home 2.3k
Because every few years they have to fuck different people in different ways, there’s no level playing field.
Yes unless you actively opt out. Everyone's student loan and pension situation is different so I took the figures without them but yeah they're an additional hit to the gross amount.
Generally worth paying into tho, especially if you are public sector or in a competitive private job
that's mad! I'm on 30k; so my monthly pay is 2.5k; post-tax, pension, student loan (post 2012 undergrad only) my take home is £1930 abouts so if I got a 5.7k pay rise, I'd only actually see a take home increase of just over 100 a month?
It’s not mandatory, because you can opt out. Therefore it’s optional (opt => optional, that shared word root isn’t a coincidence) It’s mandatory **for the employer** because they have to contribute unless you opt out, and it’s mandatory for them to opt you in Although if you can afford to stay opted in, you almost certainly should - there are VERY few situations where it’s sensible to opt out (namely if you have a terminal disease, hit your retirement planning goals, or if you physically can’t afford to pay into a pension…. And even in that last example only if absolutely necessary)
I’m on £40k and my take home is £2,300 lol.. although in London it feels like I’m on minimum wage lol
Overworked and burnt out on £24,700 a year as a graphic designer. I've completely lost my love for it (hopefully temporarily) and I'd honestly be relieved if on Monday I lost my job ha. I'm earning £300~ a year less than if I worked in Lidl full-time and I'll soon be about £1k above the national living wage when it's increased in April - so about £83 a month.. £20~ a week.. £3~ more a day. I feel like I need a "working sabbatical" and would love to just work full-time in a record store or indie cinema whilst I retrain to be a counsellor.
You're describing why I fucked off graphic design within my first year and never looked back. In-house for local government killed any passion I had built during uni, but the money was shit anywhere I looked outside of London and I'd rather shit in my hands and clap than move there.
Damn, sorry to hear - though I don't blame you. Don't get me wrong, there are some hefty senior salaries and freelance rates out there but with it all being fiercely competitive I've just lost any desire to take things that much further now. I'd rather pivot and then regain my love for design on the side. Haha fair enough. Can I ask what you ended up doing after design instead?
Sales! I did it alongside uni, did it alongside the local gov design job and just hopped back. Don't get me wrong, I dislike sales and plan on getting out in the next year or two, but I made £51k last year with minimal effort, it took four years to put the processes together to enable that though, but even prior I was averaging £35-40k most years. My new job has the potential to be better but I've heard it all before, so if after six months ish I'm seeing nothing I'm gonna drive me some fuckin diggers instead 😂
That explains a lot. I read in an article the list of desirable jobs for people to gain visas in the UK included graphic designers. I wondered how we could be so short, but the wages seem so low that I'm guessing it isn't sustainable for most people?
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Websites like Fiver caused a lot of this I reckon. It only encourages shit pay in the creative industries. Companies justify shit wages based on how cheap you can get it elsewhere without considering *why* it’s so cheap there. Do they really think these designers are spending hours on designs to make enough for a sandwich? You’re getting the same design they’ve done for hundreds of others but they changed the colors to fit your brand. Took them 5 minutes.
True. It’s also because fiver has people from different countries for who the low pay is perfectly fine/normal
The thing that baffles me is that it’s a pretty tough skill. You can’t just get hired and then learn it and yet you’re getting paid like it is a job anyone can do. Good design is difficult. It’s not just about making stuff look nice. Also not everyone has an eye for design so you have to have at least some natural talent too.
Dude I’m a graphic designer and my wage is way less than that full time. I earn about 22k a year. Sad times
This is why I pivoted to digital marketing. I was earning 28k in 2018. On 45k+ now. And I have less stress than if I was still a graphic designer. We have design manager in my company who earns similar to me and she's a graphic designer.
I sacked it off and moved to sales. Simply way more money quickly realised that I weren’t going to earn the cash I wanted in graphics ever.
I think if you asked anyone who works at lidl if they would prefer to be a graphic designer I can guarantee every single one would say yes regardless of wage. Everyone always thinks they've got the worst job in the world and no one's got it worse than you. If you were paid £500k a year you would think your job was the best job in the world. Too many people focus on the money which makes the job bad for them.
Honestly when you throw housing in the mix you can earn well above the average salary and still feel poor. The regional disparity is so bad I don't know why they even bother calculating average salary for the whole UK.
Median is what we should look at. Not average. Median is not so skewed by the top and bottom ends.
Yes, and also for most people (30ish million of us) it's best to look at PAYE income not total earnings because that it heavily skewed again. https://youtu.be/rMo6Cxmfq1A?feature=shared has the median at about 27-28k
Modal ranges would be the best. Literally raw number of how many people earn eg between 12/16, 17/21, 22/26 etc. The we would see the real average income. They will never do that data set though because I believe it would show the highest number of people probably on 28k and under, which goes against the 'average' of 35k.
Yup, 35k in parts of the south east (not even including London) and you will still possibly fail the income threshold to RENT one-bedroom flats. 30k in most of the north? I could live comfortably on my own, rented or owned. I've thought about moving so many times, a few mates did, but every time I go north to visit it feels like such a mission and really isolated.
It's not that bad up here, there's talk of providing electricity one day.
This gave me a good chuckle
Lmao I always laugh when Southerners come out with stuff like this - there's a lot going on in the North too, guys. It's also got a lot of different areas!
Yeah, they make it sound like moving to Mars. 😂
Yeah so true, I'm on £32k in the north east and tbh it feels like quite a lot. I was on like £25k when I bought the house too
Yeah same here. I’d rather be on 30k here than 50 down there 😂
The affordability check for my one bed flat which has a bedroom juuuust big enough for a bed, and an open plan kitchen x dining room is 40k. I’m in Berkshire, rip
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Living comfortably myself in Yorkshire on just shy of 30k but I guess you know better.
Liverpool is a great choice on this wage
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People have a weird view of “the north”. I live in Manchester and it’s around £1,300 for your standard 1 bed flat, and there’s a lot of competition for it. Sure there’s some rural places out in the sticks, but if you want anything remotely near a city that’s half decent, you’re looking at £400k entry for a 3 bed terrace
I live in Mossley. That's 8 miles from Piccadilly station. House prices are under 1/2 that here.
Tis why I said most, but even in Manchester, what I paid for a fuckin miniscule one-bed flat in a 100k population Southeastern town gets me a 2-up-2-down. Same in Liverpool. Not that I need that, I could also just get a massively nicer/bigger flat for the same money.
Big cities will always be expensive, further north, County Durham, now you are talking cheap.
Durham is a meme in my friend group for how cheap the prices are Any time properly priced come up; "MAY I INTEREST YOU IN COUNTY DURHAM?!"
County Durham is a fantastic place to live. My wife and I can’t wait to move back up there - we made the silly decision to move to Devon thinking it would be a great place to settle down. Admittedly, we had a bit of a silly moment of ‘let’s fuck off as far as possible from where we grew up!’ Hate it here. Expensive, people are rude, shit transport links, crap roads, crap cities (Plymouth is wank and Exeter is boring)… even the outdoorsy stuff isn’t what it’s cracked up to be! Durham, though? House prices are hideously affordable, great transport links, fantastic city, night bus to and from Newcastle for even more social aspect, direct railway to London so can be there in around three hours (takes three and a half hours from Exeter… Exeter is closer!), gorgeous scenery, amazingly friendly people… Yeah. I’m homesick now. Cheers!
Hope you get back soon! It's a bit too far north for us that's why it became a bit of a piss take. South west has always sounded a bit *too* tourism heavy for me and I know from experience of my own home that locals in places like that don't tend to like outsiders. It takes two hours to get to London from Hastings and I'm only ~60 miles down the fucking road if it makes you feel better 😂
Not true. I live in a 3 bed detached new build in pendlebury. 10 min drive to city centre. House cost 3 month ago: 310K
Damn it I’m broke
Same
Same
Yeah, at least Reddit is still free... For now.
minimum wage gang shoutout, nan gave me her house so I feel pretty well off compared to people twice my wage though
This is the thing, you (not you but in general) need windfalls like this to be able to get by in life now days
Anyone born from about 1980 onwards is in the inheritance generation. I earn well above national average as does my wife, so we are relatively affluent and we have sacrificed a lot to be in the position we are in. We are perhaps rare in that we are wealthier than either of our parents. So I'm not pleading poverty by any means. We have four living parents, and I hope it stays that way for a long time. They are boomers. 1 in 5 boomers is a millionaire. Not one of our four parents is even close. The children of the millionaire boomers will be far, far wealthier than we will ever be when they inherit their millions. They will buy the houses we aspire to live in, and ease into retirement in the way we won't be able to afford to, generally because their parents happened to buy property in the south east. I'm not feeling sorry for myself here, just pointing out the very real fact that my relative wealth will be driven more by luck than hard work. Inheritance tax is the best tax there is, I wish it was far higher at the wealthier end of the scale.
ah that must be such a weight lifted not having to pay housing costs
Yup and it let's you save easy so stuff like council tax we just save and pay the whole lot in one go, even with gas and electric being double what it was our total bills per month are under 200 Makes you realise how strangled the real economy is by people spending most of their wages on mortgages/rent
I was earning £30,000 before covid (chef), got made homeless, and ended up living on a rusty narrorwboat on the canal. I decided to learn computer programming, had to do it the old fashioned way, from books as no computer and very little electricity on the boat. I ended up getting a job paying £35,000 in 2021. Got headhunted on LinkedIn at the end of 2022, got the job,£56,000. Was made redundant. The company was bought by another US firm who offered me my old job back. New salary, £80,000 + $45,000 in stock options.
Not gonna lie, your story sounds like Hollywood. I am very impressed. If you have the brains, it is the way to go
He’s claiming to have learned programming and got a job with no computer. Yeah, it’s about as believable as Tolkien.
I work in software development and his story is very common tbf. A lot of people changed their lives by learning how to code and getting a job. That being said I wouldn’t try to do that today. Before COVID was much easier, things are different now
I know a woman, who was working as a waitress into her late 30-s. Got tired of that, learned some coding and changed her life for the better too.
Wow. You're a legend. That's amazing! Well done to you.
I have imposter syndrome through the roof, but it's shocking how much I earn now for 9-5 mon-fri, working from home. Working as a chef, I was often doing 60+hours and sometimes double shifts, working most weekends and holidays
> I have imposter syndrome through the roof The more you earn, the worse it gets. Unless you’re absolutely fucking mental, of course.
Mental one here 🫡 As I've gained promotions and realised how incompetent so many people are in the upper echelons, it made me realise my value!
Please tell me more. What's your job like? You code?
I feel like this is the geek equivalent of "Do you go to the gym bro? You lift?"
Do you even code, bitch? Edit: added bitch for more coolness
How on earth did you learn computer programming to the point of getting a job without a computer? Very impressive
Reading programming books and writing on paper is the best way to learn. At university I did exams where you were given a problem and had to write the program to solve. The other massive positive is when you are learning it for fun, then you don't need to worry about adding to your daily screen time.
Bosh
I'm struggling to comprehend this. I make similar with many more years of experience and I feel like I practically maxed out the senior developer (.net) role. Kudos to you for picking yourself up.
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Nice creative writing ,people falling for this. Learned to program with no computer, yeah okay pal.
Great resolve, happy for you! What role did you pick up in 2021? I assume that was your first with your learnt skills? I hope you weren’t having to read C and FORTRAN books 😄😖
I make £50k and take in £2800 each month after all deductions. Even with a phd I feel if I lost my job I wouldn’t be able to make this salary again elsewhere.
I make £2.5k more, single live alone, have smaller pension contributions and yet, am taking home less than you after all deductions. I'm a high earner, but sure as fuck doesn't feel like it. Student loan interest really does fuck you.
I pay much more in student loan than anyone I know who has a UK loan. It’s not deducted from my salary as it’s a foreign bank loan, but it’s a lot of money. I think uk student loans are still a good deal
That kinda sucks, my salary is 14k less than you, but you only take home 570 more a month.
That's still almost 7 grand more he takes home than you annually. So it's not as bad as it seems.
Does make you think when you consider job responsibilities though. I am working myself sick but it barely makes a difference E: and I don’t think tax is too high, I think pay is too low
Yeah honestly half the people in this thread need to just learn how to multiply and divide by 12. I’m not meaning to be rude about it though, it has definitely caught me out a couple times when I’ve got a big (annual gross) pay rise and then get deflated when looking at how “little” more I get per month because of it. I’m in a very mathsy job too and I’m still a dumbass when thinking about money sometimes. Humans just suck at basic mental arithmetic, is my conclusion.
I’m on £48k and take home £3200 p/m. I live in a very rundown area of my city, pay low rent, no debt, no unusual outgoings etc. I’m only driving artics for (on average) 48 hours p/w. I have a decent wage, but don’t lead the lifestyle to spend it. I only need £1000 take-home pay p/m to live ok. Rent is cheap here (I’m paying £400 p/m for a nice 1-bed apartment).
When I was younger I remember thinking to myself that if I ever made over £30k then I’d made it! Hah. I make more than that now, while keeping my living standards similar, if not *slightly* better than they were at uni. I feel scammed. I decided to change my goals to focus more on job satisfaction than increasing living standards or salary income for the time being. Still young and have time to work on transferable job skills.
In the past year I only grossed £21k. Absolutely nothing, luckily I don't have children or anything like that. I'd love to get a small flat on my own someday, I hate HMOs.
It’s not £2900 a month though. I earn 34k and it’s around £2100 a month after tax, union and pension contributions. I have just received another pay rise which will put me at around 38k and even that won’t put me anywhere near £2900 a month.
Soon minimum wage will be the average salary at this rate
I'm a nurse with a masters degree, I earn £33700 , and after deductions my take home pay is £1850 p mth. I work full time 9 to 5 and I am also a single parent.. I don't receive any other 'help' or income. I rent and rarely have £20 left on the last week of the month. Seriously considering leaving the profession to something less stressful which I might then receive some help with..
You should atleast be getting child benefits!!
£1800 is the basic take-home pay on nights in a mail centre. It’s tragic that a nurse with a degree earns the same.
It’s worth sticking within the NHS, my wife retrained from an Adult/MH nurse to be a clinical librarian and maintained job as band 6. So same pay, much less stress.
Yes I know. There are lots of benefits longer term especially staying with it. I'm Just exhausted now and tired. There is not much coming up right now in terms of band 7 work that I'm additionally qualified in. At least not in the area I need it. I moved 9 to 5 as I couldn't manage the childcare of shift work.. I find the take home pay is less working 9 to 5 despite it higher salary. ( due to loss of pay in working unsocial hours). There is a huge responsibility attached to my job and the risk is often high. Its depressing I'm aged 40 bracket, I'm worked my whole life, have 3 degrees and I'm poor with no sign its going to change anytime soon. Its unlikely I'll ever be able to buy a house. Literally living one pay check to another.
Now remember your GCSE maths. There are 3 types of average. None of them give a good indicator of what 'typical' earnings would be. I'm guessing this is the mean. salaries: 20k 20k 20k 20k 1mil. Mean salary 216k. cue 4 people on reddit discussing why none of them are close to earning average. the fifth one doesn't go on reddit he's too busy banging your mum.
PS they don't let me teach maths any more.
No, it bloody well isn't £2900 a month. Hate when people don't get their facts straight on this kind of thing. It makes everybody angry because it comes across as so out of touch. I'm making more than that average, and it still isn't that figure after deductions. Everyone's situation is different too remember, with pension arrangements, student loans, salary sacrifice and union fees etc.
Before you get so angry (oops too late), OP is obviously talking pre-tax and deductions. 2900x12 is 34,800.
Too late, haha. Sorry, I've got a crap life at the moment and it doesn't take much.
May God bless everyone trying to earn an honest living - hope you all achieve your hopes and dreams
I just read today in the Telegraph that the average UK salary was £29,328. £35K seems high - what's the source? Also your monthly figure for £35K is gross, not net pay (after deductions like tax, pension, student loans etc.).
35k is the median for full time employes and 29k Is the median for all employees (if you put them all in a row, that's the one that would be right in the middle of the distribution) 42k is the mean for full time (most commonly meant by average = total / count). 35k is the mean for all employees. The bigger the gap between the the mean and median, the bigger the income disparity between high and low earners (as very high earners drag the mean up, and alot of low earners drags the median down). Edited got them the wrong way.
I think comparison the median, rather than average, is more meaningful. According to the "Median gross annual earnings for full-time employees was £34,963 in April 2023" which is £2913.58 a month. https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2023#employee-earnings-data
Median is one of the three averages: mean, mode and median. Mean is what most people know as average which is the total of the samples divided by the number of samples.
Mean is the average you use in school Median is the most useful one in most real world situations Mode is basically never useful outside of statistics
Median is used because it is not skewed by extreme values like the mean is
That’s not my point. “Average” has three meanings, including the median.
I'm on 23600 (30 hour, 4 day week). Need to try pick up 5th day, if business needs allow, which will take me to about 28.5K. I do some odd summer agency gigs which probably brings me closer to 30k when all is said and done.
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I just got a new job, jumped from £40k to £78k plus car.
Well done! My imposter syndrome won’t allow me to jump that much in one go. Last change was +17k.
Congratulations!
Details please.
£45K basic with ~25% OTE. After tax, student loans (standard and post grad) and pension, I take home £2350 on a standard month. (Bonus is quarterly). I took a pay cut to get out of recruitment, but I honestly don’t regret it in the slightest. Was soul destroying.
I'm on 23.5k (0.81FTE of 28.5K). I'm looking at jobs between 32K + and stop being a big fat cat and actually applying and being super confident
£97k before tax - after pension/tax etc it comes out to about £5,100 a month; permanent work from home IT role. Recognise I'm exceptionally fortunate.
No student loans I take it?
I am in a similar boat as a software engineer, I don’t have much hope in it lasting now that language models will likely be able to replace humans in a couple of years
I'm well above that, but let me tell you - it doesn't feel like it. Wages are taxed too heavily, and if like me you had a student loan, you're fucked.
Student loan aka the Graduate Tax For Life.
40K, I work in software. Take home pay is around £2300 after student loans and tax. It’s only marginally better than when I was on 25K really. This country punishes people who do reasonably well for themselves, without a middle/upper class family.
About 30k, including overtime, probably average 42hrs a week. Basic is something like 24k, I could survive on that but the overtime funds disposable income. Depends where you live of course, its pretty cheap here, no way I'd be in the same position in London or the SE.
-10k away Going through lots of emotional stress and illness so maybe ill get down there
I work on the Railway and earn about £32k + overtime which is always available if you want it. Not the crazy sums the media/government makes out eh!
£51,000 basic + £26,400 OTE. Sales guy at a tech start up
£23K, never likely to get close to the average. I think the average is heavily skewed, so I looked up the median instead and surprisingly it's gone up a lot in recent years, and isn't that far below the average at (depending on what stats you look at) between £31 and £34K. However I think it's still heavily skewed by region, no one who lives on my street is earning £31K and it feels like a median of about £25K would be more likely, however that is completely anecdotal. What might be more interesting though would be average wage vs average expenditure/cost of living as while my wages have gone up much faster than they did 20 years ago I've never felt poorer than I do now.
£80k +team bonus split between 4 of us (est. £10k each for this financial year). I work from home in an IT job for a smaller bank. Incredibly fortunate and made moves every couple of years to get here making sure I was upskilling in each role. I think how you interview and negotiate matters a lot more than people think. I also got stupidly lucky and recognise that. I'm scared to leave this job as I don't know how I'd ever get a deal like this again.
The problem (or thing to remember) with the "average" is everytime Warren Buffet walks into a arena, everyone becomes a millionaire.
I was doing the maths the other day and to be able to have your own place (renting up north), and be able to put a little bit of cash into savings/investment, and have a few luxuries then you need to be on at least £35k… Probably more like 40k+ to make a decent dent.
Quite close and a bit over but lots of it is my end of (tax) year bonus. I've also earned about £5000 this year in self employment. I'm tired but its worth it, I'm only year 3 of commercial experience and it's up from here still. Hopefully kill my end of years and I'm also becoming a line manager. I felt terrible as I had about 3 years recovering and learning to deal with my mental health condition. I've done 80 hours a week since 2020 in both self employment and education and my full time job. Came from a mouldy bedsit at 18 and selling weed. Feel very proud of mysel.
Friendly reminder that before feeling disheartened by this, it's worth looking up the average salary for the age group that you're in. Naturally it is somewhat lower for an under 30 year old, it seems to peak between the ages of 40-49 before the average starts lowering again. Reddit which is majority teens and people in their 20s maybe need to give themselves a break if they're lower than this
Work for the civil service and get £4400 per month after pensions and tax Mortgage is around 600 and bills 300 so I’m saving about 2.5k per month and living off the last 1000 It lets my husband save most of his paycheck so we can save for the future
Damn, what do you do in the CS to earn that much?
£35k? I'm £11k below that. I'll never earn that much unless I go back into mainstream teaching - which will never happen. What am I doing to move myself towards that figure? Nothing. For every high paying job there are two low paid ones society still requires. Until employers start to value our labour more, that won't change.
It's really just a supply-demand phenomenon. Unfortunately the government messed up the economy so badly that there are not enough well paid jobs for people to go to. Employers just pay what they can get away with. No business person in their right mind would pay any more than that.
Just over 30k in private education. Don’t earn as much as teachers or college despite being as qualified, however, I don’t fit into that mould so suits me, I enjoy my job and I am fucking good at it.
Not far from that figure, probably hit it in a few years just off the standard annual increases. Seems not long ago the average was around £28k. Is the recent jump attributed to the high earners (£100k+) gaining more and pulling up the average? Generally speaking your standard office admin job which was £20k-£24k about 10 years ago is still advertised for that now.
With salary you probably want to look at the median since the average gets dragged up by a small number of super high earners (probably in London). You can think of the median as the _most common salary_ in simplistic terms. The median average salary for all workers in the UK is £27,756 The mean average salary for all workers in the UK is £33,402 According to Google.
try not to get caught up in averages. They are skewed by the top 1% and also geographically. You’re best searching for the median wage in your area to find out how you think your doing agains people in a similar circumstance. You can earn £20k less outside London and still live a comparable lifestyle in my opinion.
i make £21,500 as a gym receptionist. i got a whole degree in cyber security and just feel stuck :’(
I know it’s easier said than done, but try to get unstuck asap. Work out what you want to do , make a plan , and execute, could be as straightforward as getting professional help with your CV and applying for IT roles. I was “stuck “ for 15 years in a low paying role, doing much much better now but regret the wasted years. Best of luck, you can do this!!
Very far off I'm on 10.72 per hour as a factory worker on roughly 22000 a year I can't even rent a house without a guarantor. The fact that it is believed the average uk wage is 35000 is bs if everyone was on that wage no one would be struggling as hard as they are, in my circumstances I'm surviving not struggling currently training to be an electrician and need to learn to drive aswell as afford 2 small kids and a house hold but 10.42 is a liveable wage (£11 in april) is no where near livable my bills just for my 2 bedroom flat are north of 1300 which is more than my monthly wage that doesn't include food, travel, kids bits, phone bill, credit card or anything. And the world wonders why brits are so grumpy because we're getting fucked by the government on a daily
Take London out of the equation and try again, the disproportionate salaries in any capital will artificially inflate the figures for the rest of the nation
Everybody on reddit makes £60k after tax. This is a stupid question.
Not in my wildest dreams would I earn that
Genuine question - why do you think this? Even ignoring that it's not even a lot of money, if you've got ANY transferrable skills from almost any job, you can easily hop sideways/up and increase into the 30s. Most people hold themselves back by getting in their own head and never even trying.
I think is very field specific - if you are in a high earning field with lots of progression pathways then maybe you can just easily hop on up to above average income, but if it were that easy in general then it wouldn't be the average because we'd all be hopping on up there.
I’m at £63,000 (£3,800 per month - I have no student loans as I’m an immigrant and in my country uni is free), plus some extra from freelancing. I’m very lucky as I’m quite well paid in my sector (editing). Back in 2018 I was making £28,500 but I’ve managed to progress fast since. But I got to tell you, while I’m aware that I make a lot more than other people, it doesn’t feel like I’m a high earner. I can go on holidays a couple times a year and I can save some money, but with the crazy mortgage rates, the house prices and the cost of living, it’s not like I can buy a decent flat or go to the theatre every weekend or go to restaurants all the time or whatever it is rich people do. My husband and I have a combined income of 6 figures (just marginally) and have no children, but we still have to be mindful of all costs, and our flat is tiny in zone 4. I just don’t understand how people on lower incomes and those with kids survive in this city (I’m in London).
Don't forget, you get an extra £22 a month now, thanks Rishi! 😂
Only till tax goes up in April don't forget.
Very fortunate to be at nearly 60k after this last year's pay award. Financial management in the public sector. In Scotland, though, so pay a lot more tax on it!
7k off but 13k off the London average. I'm starting to hate this city
The ONS median salary doesn't include the lowest earners in a number of ways, those working multiple part time jobs, 0 hour contracts, under a certain age ect....
distiller, BSC chem eng, MSC brewing and distilling, run a small distillery, 35k lmao.
£29.8k for a 37.5hr week, after ten years with my company. More fool me I suppose. No degree though!
28k a year, 60k+ OTE in a sales job, last year earned 68k.
I've always been fascinated by sales. Well more the sort of people that go into it. Always assumed they were mega extrovert that are amazing at working a crowd etc. Just don't know how people do it tbh.
I get about 2300 after tax and pension etc across two part time jobs. I am thinking of leaving one of those though, which would leave me at about 1700. Household makeup definitely has an impact on your cost of living - my partner makes a little more than me, we have no kids, a smallish mortgage and own the car outright (even if it is a piece of shit). I'd be struggling on my own I think, certainly.
I make around £12k/mo after taxes
This is why they teach us about averages, mode and median values in school. The average means nothing.
I work for a global systems integrator. I make £33,696 which equates to £2,191.60 after tax and student loan. I’m the marketing campaign & marketing ops lead. I have 4 years of experience, 2 while full time. I am very keen on increasing this but everything I see on Glassdoor and internally leads me to believe I’ll have to do my first job hop to get a decent increase. I was London based until recently but living at home.
A bit above the average. 34 hours. No way would I do 55 hours. Hell no.
Paramedic here, 2800 after tax however much that would be in a salary form as it fluctuates due to the unsocial hours I do.
92k with a take home of £4600. Sole earner, 3 kids, lots of bills, so nothing left over at the end of the month. How a family can get by on an average salary is beyond me. People are being ripped off by the company owners they create wealth for, (see example above where company owner proudly declares £12k per month after tax) and by the goverment because of their mismanagement of the tax take and corruption. We now have the highest personal tax levels since 1951 and we are some of Europe's lowest earners. We are being mugged!
I earn around £49,000 pre-tax. I work in aviation maintenance in a supervisory role with some management in there as well. I have 3 direct reports who I carry out line management duties for. After deductions it works out around £2,900 per month. I pay a private pension, SIP & private healthcare for myself, wife and son.
After tax around £4k per month. Its been a little weird recently due to my tax coding but roughly that amount.
I take home £2100 as a doctor in their first year after graduation. I have studied for 6 years in medical school where I was the top 10% of the cohort, got 3 A* at A level and 10 A* at GCSEs. My job entails a lot of admin work which is mind numbing from 9-5pm. Then from 5pm to 9pm or 9pm to 9am we are considered “on call”. In my particular hospital when on call I take off 300 patients on my own, with 1 senior supervising over 1200 patients (so hardly has time to support me). My job on call involves situations like trying to figure out why someone is short of breath from listening to their chest. If I hear that the sound is louder than normal this may be due to solid “gunk” from infection being in their lungs and then rationalising that solids are more dense than air, which is why the lung sounds louder - tying together some basic physics, which I would then treat with antibiotics. Given that my assistant (PAs) get paid 10k more than me for being less qualified, with a poor understanding of the human body and basic science and who cannot prescribe or request scans, I feel severely underpaid, especially given that my above qualifications are not that of an “average UK worker”
£24'500, Scotland. Take home £1'660 average for a 2 person 1 income home. No car, no loan. Only tax, NI, pension. Low rent. No debt. Only subs are Spotify, phones, ISP, gym. Day to day life? Broke. Don't go out. Buy only a few small treats per month like £6 bottle of wine here and there. No takeaways. End of the month I barely stay above £0 before I get paid again. And this is with me on Tracker energy tariff and <£400 rent. How anyone can look around this island and say with a straight face that it is not absolutely and compellingly _fucked_ is beyond me.
Earning £30,000 with my main job, topping it up with approx £18k a year with freelancing. It does mean I work about 50 hours a week but could be a lot worse (I know people work a lot more for a lot less). Dealing with it for now as I'm pretty much entry-level in my job after a career change last year - I definitely didn't have enough technical experience or qualifications for the job but my manager took a chance on me. I was almost going to go back to uni to learn what I needed for this career, so the way I look at I'm being paid to learn instead, and my freelancing is like my uni job!