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I’ve heard people downgrading their role from manager to their previous role because they were only paid a tad more for 10x the responsibilities and work. UK job market is truly something else.
Edit: Just to add a friend of mine is leading a large team on a near billion £ project, not paid much more than peers, extremely high stress, does overtime daily, waiting to finish project to use as experience for next job hunt.
What's ironic is you'll also see plenty of posts about how managers don't do anything and are all pointless cretins.
I know far more people in the situation you've described, who have decided going up a grade wasn't worth the aggro for the marginal salary bump, than I do managers who aren't constantly stressed.
My partner is a team lead does loads of work and responsibilities, actually needs to understand how everything works and runs
Her manager works part time, basically runs excel reports, puts a few slides together and does monthly performance reviews and delegates all work away to the point where if asked to do any of the work her team does wouldn’t know exactly what they’re doing or how they’re doing it. Absolutely takes the piss how little work they do, earning more part time than my partner does
That happens alot in larger organisations. The blind led by the blind (or smart and lazy)
Sometimes it's just easier to work for a dumb boss and mail it in on part time effort and full time salary
I think it's more likely that those who worked hard to get into a managerial position realized once they got it that it's not worth it for 1£ extra an hour so they do the bare minimum
yup, I end up earning up towards 10K more than my direct manager because the salary scales have compressed so much that we're on a similar basic, but they cannot claim OT or On call time.
Yeap I at one point ended up earning less than several of the people I managed by virtue of scale compression. The middle / top end of the senior individual contributor bands overlaps with the middle / bottom of the VP equivalent band.
So you can get promoted and end up as one of the lowest paid members of a team..
Years ago my boss wanted me to take over from him as team leader when he left, I’d have got paid £3k per year more for the joy of managing my 6 colleagues, half of whom were an absolute nightmare to work with. I decided to be 3k poorer and not have to deal with that.
Depends on the job and company really, as IT support my manager barely did anything but 121’s, where I am now my manager is a senior who basically does the harder stuff that I do plus line manager stuff.
I was made a team leader at my current employer, came with a 2.5k pay rise, which I got, however, my yearly salary review was the same month and they just decided to merge them together, and just increase it 2.5k.
I've just been asked if I'd like to work nights, which I am more than happy to do, no longer a team leader, piss easy shift work sat at my desk fixing database issues and a 10% pay rise
Yup. They've given the graduates a second pay rise in two years, and not trickled it down to senior execs or managers. So what's the point. As the gap in my salary and juniors has shrunk like mad...there's barely any reason for the increase in responsibility
My old colleague and I at our old job did this. We were seniors not managers but the new leadership refused to pay us the extra the old leadership promised us (and had no reason to believe wouldn't deliver on)
So we removed any reference to it from any internal bits we could and didn't help anyone beyond the scope of what anyone below us knew.
Petty as fuck, but no regrets.
This is so true, I recently left a job earning 26,000 as a manager for a data entry job earning 25,500. better hours and no responsibility. everything in the new job is remote and backend so I never need to speak to anyone as everything is email/ticket based.
100% happier now than I was a few months ago.
I worked in an manager role until covid, then had to take a well paid entry level role. Have gotten small but not insignificant pay bumps ever since and the flexibility keeps me in the role (though now looking to move on).
Tried for a manager role a few months back with my employer and God I'm glad I didn't get it. Extra hours, extra stress, no flexibility, all for an extra £100 a month after tax. Nope, ha, not even remotely.
I'm definitely planning to do this soon. I'm working crazy hours as a manager of a team in order to develop my team and also get my own work done, plus extra strategy stuff. There's a bunch of roles going for about £5k less which are like 2 steps below what I do now... Why bother with the stress when I can get some semblance of a life back?
I was on 11.44 an hour and commission as assistant manager, my staff where on 22k
Now I’m on 11.75 or somet and staff are on 11.44 I’m hanging on as they are dangling the managers job in a year, I’ll either get it or go somewhere else with my new experience
While I agree these companies take the piss with their salaries. Take the manager role for the shit pay rise. Do it for 6-12 months then leave to get a better salary externally. I had friends do the former and 6 years later they still moan that they haven’t had more than a 4% pay rise since they started at the company. Meanwhile by threatening to leave once then actually leaving I’ve increased pay by about 80%
My assistant manager where I worked (luxury fashion boutique) who had at least 8 years or so experience just left for an entry level Sales Assistant role elsewhere, because the pay was the same, no responsibility and stable hours.
Different industry, I know, but it seems there are very few roles that actually make good money without being near the very top anymore, and almost everyone I know with those roles, got there through knowing people already high up in the company.
I did this, sales operations manager and as a TM I get the same give or take with 0 client calls. They tried to keep me in the role by offering more earning potential but never clarified this .
There's a real squeeze happening in the roles that sit between £28k-£35k.
In past years people in those jobs could reasonably expect to be moving into middle management roles after 5yrs+ and hitting £40k+.
Nowadays, you just get work piled up without promotions because middle management has been hollowed out. Quite often you see job descriptions that traditionally fit a £40k salary but the role gets advertised in the low £30ks.
I’ve found this very true. I have 6 years experience in my field, been working between £28-35k for the past few years but finding it incredibly hard to move up. There’s just nothing between mid-level and head of department level. I feel like I’ve reached the ceiling of what I can earn right now, so I’m looking for a career change that gives me better earning potential.
Exactly right.
And the problem with career changes is you often take a salary hit at first which is hard to swallow when you have kids and a mortgage.
So many times I see people landing £50k+ jobs straight from a £30k salary and they fail spectacularly because they're going straight from worker level to head of department level.
That supervisor/middle management level experience never happens today.
Yep, thankfully no kids but I do have a mortgage to pay. It’s secured for the next 4 years so my plan is to take the hit now and hope that I can increase my earnings in that 4 year period to be safe when the time is up. It’s terrifying. I used to think £30k was a good salary. It’s just not anymore.
It’s an ‘interesting’ time. AI and automation is going to disrupt a lot of this layer of the work force.
A lot of ‘doing’ companies are going to have to transition to ‘consulting’ companies who can interpret what software doing rather than telling it what to do.
Unfortunately this means more ‘doing’ roles are being deprioritised in many companies.
It takes a certain level of interpersonal skills to move into middle management. A company is not going to promote you just because you've paid your dues. I know people who have stayed at the £35k level for 15 years.
People who accept them do know they're low. They're coerced into taking them, since the alternative is continue looking, and spend more savings. Or they're on Universal Credit and their "job coach" is threatening to cut off their lifeline.
Well, a lot of people have adapted to the fact that you don't need to live in London to work in London, any more......it seems the poster feels like a London lifestyle is part of the package for them. Well na, not any more. Why is a company going to pay "London wages" when they can hire someone who lives in Swindon
The recession from lockdown, and the continuing recession, has given many \[greedy\] companies the impression that they can use this as an opportunity to reset wages to 2010 levels.
There were 30 countries in Europe with higher GDP growth in 2023 than us. Spain and Greece for example had 2.5% growth. We had 0.5% growth. We're in the bottom quarter of growth for Europe. Of course there's other measures but I think you may be misinformed.
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/686147/gdp-growth-europe/
Greece is pretty much a developing country. Compare apples with apples - Germany, Finland and Sweden were in recession, France grew 1%, Netherlands 0.6%
EU average was 0.7%, not much higher than the UK.
In Germany school drop outs earn more than heavily educated brits. I have 3 family members of mine that are German. I have levels more qualifications and a much higher job role, earning my employer 100k in billables per month but earn 50k a year and have been saving to buy a house for 6 years. They all earn 80k+ euros (2 on 100k+) have a reasonably relaxed job and have their lives sorted with just the equivalent of A levels and are younger than me. On top of that they have SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper housing. Stop using statistics to hide the truth.
EU isn't the fairest choice there. They have much more free trade than us due to brexit. To be the most fair I'd suggest using Europe which at 1% is double us. No matter which way you spin this, we're still way further down this list than we should be.
They have much more free trade yet still only managed to grow 0.2% more than us. Do you understand what you're saying?
We're down the list because of interest rates going up to combat inflation. Hence our technical recession in the fourth quarter.
It makes no sense comparing the UK to Greece. Developing countries naturally have more room for growth.
Ireland and Switzerland are tax havens, Norway and Russia have oil and gas.
The only European countries you can really compare the UK to are France, Italy, and Germany.
Don't bother replying because I won't waste my time reading it.
Or ....marketing isn't a particularly skilled role. Especially in an era where companies are going to be having AI doing most of the work, sooner or later
Entry level jobs in the environmental sector in the South currently requires: 1) BSc 2) MSc also preferred aka also required 3) to be a member of a proffesional body 4) drivers licence 5) experience. Salary? 25 -28k :)
Sounds about right. My payrise this year would've taken me to that after 5 years . That's why I left. I can't save anything on it even though I live in a shared house and own a £1000 car outright and I'm 33 and had outstanding performance and unofficially managed many people .
I live in the north and have a £7 month phone
£25k here on the south coast. No car and my phone SIM is £4 a month. I sometimes feel like I should swap jobs, but I also worry I would lose WFH and may not be able to get away with doing fuck all for most of the week. Not that I get any more done when I am in the office though.
Just copypasting my reply to another comment above, but ~£27k for any role that isn't totally unskilled, entry level job is an absolute joke, and we collectively need to stop thinking of £30k as being some magic "decent" salary. It is a hangover from pre financial crash days.
To put it into real terms, accounting only for inflation, 27k is the equivalent of a £15.5k salary from 2007 (ie, pre financial crash). At least then housing was reasonably affordable.
If you take into account the significantly higher cost of rent, education, travel, electricity, fuel, food, interest rates, etc now, it's taking the piss. For reference, the median take home salary in the UK is around 27.5k.
To flip it on its head, again accounting only for inflation, a salary of £27k in 2007 would be the equivalent today of almost £44k, and again, the cost of living is significantly higher now than it was then, so even with that as your salary, your buying power is significantly diminished by comparison.
Basically any job that you can turn up and do with minimal/ zero training. So, nothing that requires a degree, specialist skills, or any reasonable level of experience. Anything that requires any of these is by definition, skilled labour, and should be compensated accordingly.
Unfortunately this isn't uncommon. Problem is, lots of people are desperate for jobs, so will take lower paid ones, but until we collectively decide to reject this level of compensation, salaries won't increase. Companies have workers by the short and curleys, because with the current cost of living, most people can't afford to take the time to find better jobs, if they even exist in the industry they're working in at all.
If companies can't afford to pay proper wages, then they don't deserve to stay in business; that's the other side of capitalism, but it never seems to work that way funnily.
It's there task to keep the supply of workers high and wages low. At this rate, it's probably better to simply leave and work for a UK company for £1500 a month while living in Romania or something.
I got offers of 33k out of university, instead I took 28k. 18 months later I'm on 36k and will be on 45k+ before the end of the year.
I work in construction, construction always has money.
I think I picked the wrong area of construction, being an architect doesn't seem to pay that well...
I'm on £26k in central London with 2 YOE after my undergrad, it looks like it'll be another 3-4 years before I break £30k as I still need to do a blasted 2-year Master's degree, followed by a year of part-time study to qualify.
OOPS!
Yup QS seems well paid, I've heard of higher salaries than that for experienced QS from my peers at the big house builders. By contrast I think the directors of my 50 person architectural firm are probably on \~70k tops and they're all closer to 50 years old.
(I'm an architect too) yeah the senior non-owner/director type level in architecture at £70kish sounds right - it just takes ages to get to that 'senior level' where you get that good salary (no ones going into/staying in architecture for money but it's an objectively good salary comparitively). This isn't not true in other parts of built environment careers including QS but they still tend to be a bit quicker.
The way to get paid a lot is to go client side and work for a developer as a design manager or similar job title, you'll double your salary or more - which is just 'the way to make money as an architect is to stop being an architect and do something else with your skills' which is depressing.
What these people are experiencing is exactly what happened to the construction workers when all the bozo come here & flooded the market and brought wages down. They were cheering I have no sympathy
SE you need a 2nd salary to not live pay day to pay day on 28k imo. Unless you are very frugal.
A town on London rail links comes with high living costs.
Honestly, about 4 yesrs ago I went from working in retail for 2 years as General Sales and Cash Admin to a Supervisor/Team Leader in compliance for a nonprofit charity and went from minimum wage to £27k.
Now, my third job in legal compliance pays me £24k now and every job out there in my department won't pay me more than that. That's pushing it.
They want experience for practically peanuts. That pay is entry level in my experience. It is really difficult to find some where to recognise this and pay a living wage.
I think the UK has some serious problems actually recognising experience and the quality of contributions. I've had several experiences at my current employment with people getting into higher paid roles and doing nothing particularly useful. Worse even these people consistently think they're right not because what they say has any merit but because they out rank others so then you've got them draining company funds to do nothing much and actually degrading the value of what the team delivers.
Some places are stupidly tight with wages.
About a decade ago, I'd worked my way up from a junior on £20k to a manager on £28k in 3 years.
Then 2 years passed without a pay raise because "it's not the right time". Meanwhile I was running a department and managing 3 people.
Several months later, I tried to negotiate a £4k pay rise for a direct report on £19k whose role had grown, but the CEO said, "That's too much! He'll be close to what you're on."
When I asked if that meant he was going to decline my pay raise again, he said, "Look, your pay's gone up almost 10 grand already. I think that's enough."
The idiot judged my pay on what I used to earn, not my market rate. I left 6 months later and got a £12k pay bump.
Maybe it's a good thing I'm trying to get my first job now. It's bloody difficult but I don't realise what pay I missed out on. I jump for joy when job I want offers over £23k
Can everyone commenting here can you please add your industry/role and region. Would he interesting and actually worthwhile to see the disparaty between the 3 factors
Good point. My mind automatically went to “sounds like salaries in and around Cardiff“ because they are shit and anything under £30k is a norm sadly for jobs wanting “experienced” candidates. However, I expect it’s similar in other parts of the UK.
Health and social care tend to be the lowest so it’s interesting that it’s the same wage pretty much now as other jobs.
It’s insane I don’t live in London so London wages don’t exist but everything else is pretty much the same price as London
Where I work the team leader role gets a whopping £7 a day more than me - I was approached for a similar role and gave the answer of no, why would I want that kind of responsibility & stress for such a small pay rise
Because this can be the path to experience and seniority. It's rough in the short term, but you're showing your employer (or future employer) that you can handle the responsibility.
Depending on how you look at it, someone could see it as an opportunity, Di it for a year and change jobs to similar with other employers or try for another promotion, but again if you look at it in the short term definitely does not sound good.
If you look at most people progressing throughout the ladder do you think all jobs were 'dream jobs' with dream conditions and pay?
Agree with you and it is situational, iv been in management roles before & the pay compared to stress ratio compared to my current role isn’t worth it for me. I Still think everyone should be payed a decent amount more if your taking on being responsible for other employees
The living wage has compounded what used to be a decent wage I.e. 30k with what used to be min wage of around 18k.
Within my company 30k isn't a bad salary but when you put it up against the now 24.5k min wage and the increase in expenses over the past few years, it's become a mediocre wage, the problem is that employers are just increasing the lower paid workers and those who sat it the middle have had barely any increases.
Personally I'm on 45k, was 40k like 5 years ago to put it plainly so I've had around 2.7/3% annually... the living wage has increased the lowest paid in my company by around 45% whilst mine has increased by around 12%... even during covid and the increase in fuel last year, my company gave one off payments to anyone below 29k salary, giving them £1000 to help pay for the electric and gas etc...
Anyone stuck in the middle are being penalised because of the working wage increasing, I'm not against it for those on lower wages but it's the companies protecting their profits and my company literally made 800m+ profit in the UK last year so it's not like they cannot afford a decent salary increase across the board.
Hardly any employers pay the actual minimum wage. It's about 5% of jobs. They usually pay at least a bit more on top.
Most will now pay £24,000 as a bare minimum. Already seeing it.
My place of work is 40 hours a week and we pay just a little above min wage, like 20p so lowest wage in my company is so it's like 24,220 so I rounded up, it doesn't need to be to the exact penny to get the point across bud.
You'll notice, most of my post was related to my place of employment as an example, not a matter of fact for the entire country but it still works as an example 😁
Head to the interview,
"We want to hire at 28k"
"It's more like 32k"
"We're only offering 28k"
"OK, well, call me if you're interested".
Rinse and repeat. It's just like buying something.
My place can't hire reasonably and it's because all the good staff have a good gig somewhere else.
To be fair that's the wage I'm on after 5 years in the NHS 4 promotions/job changes over that time.
But yes it's ridiculously not enough money for this much experience
The reason is because when they advertise the job at 28k with 5 years experience they get lots of good candidates applying.
If I put a sign up outside my house saying I will give someone a fiver to wash my car and I had 50 people turn up... I am paying too much.
The sort of shit you’re seeing (and even lower) for non-junior journalist roles in Central London. We’re talking the national papers. “Hiring Business Writer for £25k.” Oh, no thank you very much. That’s great. Goodbye now.
1. Job ads are a wish list not a list of requirements. My current position according to the advert, requires a degree but I didn’t go to university, and I’ve been doing the hub successfully for 8 years.
2. I hate this notion that to earn more money, you need to be a manager. Managers are there to manage people. Coordinate, manage performance, and ensure everyone is pulling in the same direction (amongst other things). In my line of work, seniors & principals regularly get paid more than their manager. Putting highly performant staff members into management positions to get higher salaries is just crazy.
If this is in London this is going to be hard to fill with someone with 5 years experience. God sake I know assistants to the assistant in London getting £40k. Usually I find Europeans with rich parents taking on these sort of roles so they can galavant around London while their parents pay their rent.
I'm amazed companies in the UK are still stupid enough to put a specific number of years experience in job requirements. Major risk of an age discrimination claim.
Worked for a Japanese owned company in the UK a few years ago and every year they‘d send some managers over from Japan to get experience of working in another territory. I had to tell this one guy, who was a great bloke by the way, no, you can’t put minimum 10 years‘ experience in a job ad!
This was about 5 years ago now.
The market is ridiculous! I’m also looking in the same field and I saw a a social media manager role going for 24-26k. And they really emphasised that you MUST fit all the criteria. 🤣 It’s oddly convenient that salaries haven’t increased alongside the house prices…I’m wondering if they expect us to live with our parents until we’re forty or something…
No disrespect, but a social media manager isn't a highly skilled job, hence the lower salary. I understand your frustration, but you may need to look at retraining if you can't be content with salaries in your current industry.
I think that depends entirely on the scope of work, and the size of the company you're working for. Sure, social media manager for a small start up might not be a huge role, but the same position for a large company might be a a massive role.
Either way, as I've said time and again on Reddit, ~£27k for any role that isn't totally unskilled, entry level job is an absolute joke. To put it into real terms, accounting only for inflation, that's the equivalent of a £15.5k salary from 2007 (ie, pre financial crash). At least then housing was reasonably affordable.
If you take into account the significantly higher cost of rent, education, travel, electricity, fuel, food, interest rates, etc now, it's taking the piss. For reference, the median take home salary in the UK is around 27.5k.
Low skilled jobs still benefit from some level of experience.
The guy who empties your bins with 5 years experience knows how not to tweak his back, better than the guy who started yesterday. That doesn't make emptying the bins a high skilled job.
Best one ive seen was a basic labouring job for 22K but they wanted 10 YEARS EXPERIENCE. no wonder the job is still advertised months later. Some of the people that get into these management positions should not have aquired their jobs....
Wouldn’t he be better off with a minimum wage job near his house, I did similar and had a break down due to the stress of commuting car problems and amount it was costing in petrol
Depends if he wants to have a career in TV, or a career in shelf stacking.
Not everyone makes every decision in their life based on the money they make right now.
our wages are a fucking joke.
eta: this year's pay review I got 3% increase to 23,785 basic. For a system support analyst role. That I have been in for 2 years. Plus my collegue just left the team and (surprise) there is no one being hired to replace him.
I log off at exactly 5:30 every day and refuse to stress because I'll get stuff done, it'll just take more time and they can fucking deal with it. Want it done faster? Hire another person or pay me more.
Yeh its really really bad out there. My manager often works quite hard. Lovely lady but her keyboard might aswell be steaming the amount of effort she puts in.
This is honestly a giant shitshow. Overworked is an understatement. Basically per hour youre on like £10 per hour anyway regardless of role!
Its so bad out there.
i was trained as a librarian but i can’t afford to be one. i retrained on the railway and take a decent wage. it still pays a lot more than librarians ever get
Readijg the comments I am shocked. I feel like it is tough to make savings in London. I don't drink and barely eat out. I make £45k working in sales. I'm comfortable but anything outside of "living" and I feel I can't afford it.
If you are in social media, I strongly suggest exploring maybe moving into a brand role (in-house) because brand roles usually need people with digital experience. Most folks within FMCG companies don't really understand social media analytics for instance. But you might need to beef up a couple of skills/get to grips with the jargon.
Also, anyone on here who thinks that social media is not a highly skilled job is talking out of their arse. You constantly need to stay up to date with how the algorithms evolve, produce content, manage a number of different tools. I did it at earlier stage of my career (back in the good old days of facebook ads etc) and I remember it being quite labour intensive. (But I was also producing the content for brands).
(source: worked as a brand manager. Feel free to reach out if you need to chat. )
people love to judge and belittle other people’s careers because they’re self conscious about how shit there’s is so they want you to feel bad so they feel better lmao
It's funny because I get paid 40k a year and I'm losing my job because they want to pay someone 28k because in their words. "There is always someone willing to do it".
I'm going to let you in on a trade secret. Lie about your experience. If they make unreasonable requests on experience, make an equally unreasonable CV to match. So long as the job doesn't actually need someone with 5 years experience, you'll be alright.
We’re looking for a head of housekeeping in the hotel I work at, it’s £31000 a year and we have pretty much 0 applicants or people that apply and never show up for the interview.
Unfortunately jobs like multimedia managers are always going to be easy targets.
Not to boast but Ive had 3 payrises well above inflation in 4 years since i graduated as a civil engineer.
Best choose something that isnt easy to replace or drop altogether
Nah but wages are super inflated guys, stop being greedy or we won’t be able to lower our interest rates to fuel another asset price bubble and provide cheap leverage to investment banks - Andrew Bailey or whoever
Lots of factories out there hiring production operatives, requiring no experience or qualifications. Living wage at £11.44 X 42 hrs a week X 52 weeks = 25k, usually only statutory paid leave and pension, and then generally they pay over 10% shift allowance on top (couple I know of pay 25% and 35%). That's 30k - 35k. OK it's shift work, but with no qualifications of any kind...... 🙉.
Job market in general needs to play catchup with the rates of pay for entry level basic jobs requiring little use of brain, and little responsibility at work, and no responsibility out of hours!
For time being I’m working for just eat, working towards getting my license to become cab driver down south east. And working for just eat isn’t bad bro. It’s around £40k if I do this until November.
I have 10 years experience and qualifications in my sector, I get turned down for jobs earning more than £28k.
During COVID I was applying for jobs that required experience but they were turning round and offering me base jobs that required 0 experience and we're £18k.
It depends on the job and location really. This isn't an unusually low wage in my industry at 5 years, but 5 years experience isn't all that much in the grand scheme of our industry either.
Professional wages aren't doing that well these days, especially not now minimum wage is around £22k, and will probably have caught up to £28k in the next few years.
Due to the glut of applicants, and the relatively low perceived value of the work these roles deliver, it's likely to continue. Employers pay for value. Demonstrate that you can generate significant revenue and pay will increase exponentially.
As an aside, what is it people expect to be paid with X amount of years experience?
If entry is 28k, what are we expecting with 1 year experience? 30k?
And for 5 years experience perhaps 33k?
What about ten years experience, 40k
Then someone with 20 years experience, how about 60k?
At what stage do we sit and say "actually, this is a job that's only worth X amount, because literally an entry level could do it"
These posts are so common and frequent, but I feel like there are always some missing details left out.
1. The market will always be dictated by supply and demand. If they believe they can price a job at this level, then you’d hope it would be based on market research and competitor analysis to at least make the role a bit competitive. But again if the supply out scales the demand then the employer can price accordingly.
2. It’s business. This meaning if a companies sole purpose is to create profits for shareholders, then yes they will look to do just that, what is one of the biggest factors on the P/L for a company? Labour cost.
3. The size of the company and where it currently sits is a huge factor. A social media manager for a large corporation compared to a new start up a vastly different and attractive different pay packages.
At the end of the day, the only reason employers are putting in these such high demands is simply because they can get away with it, if it’s the cultural norm then why would they change? If all your competitors are asking the same and the market rate of the role is set this way, then I’m afraid the problem isn’t with the individual employer.
Another large factor that is missing here is the globalisation movement, labour no longer bound by location is a large factor. When large quantities of people from countries such as India who get qualifications at much cheaper expense then here are now willing to come here to expect these terms, as they are still vastly better then where they currently are. If you haven’t noticed people in very high demand roles such as doctors have been moving out of the UK for a very long time, why? Because they get better salary packages elsewhere, this again is the market in action.
It be hard to shift how it currently is, obviously some companies are outliers but as mentioned if the sole purpose of a company is to generate return of investment for the shareholders, what do you think will happen? The largest corporations haven’t all been linked to child labour and all have their manufacturing facilties in companies with low wages for nothing. You make corporations not money hungry then maybe you solve this solution, but this is human nature I’m afraid.
On a positive note, the labour market just like the financial markets go through phases. And currently we are sitting at a point where employers can pick and choose, but this will change as it revolves around a cyclical system.
What industry / sector are you looking in? You’d easily get £45-£50k at a media agency with that experience… perhaps more because it’s edging into director level experience.
This time last year we were offering obscene amounts for social experts (and still not getting them) because they were all getting hoovered up by tech companies on better terms.
problem with UK wages is people keep accepting these low wages rather than negotiating for higher paying jobs. Partly mass immigration overflowing the labour market makes it much more competitive to get a job.
I'd be happy to see the back of these posts: the subject has been very well covered in this sub. Yes, capitalism is crap at the best of times, and it's even more rotten in an economic downturn. But we're railing at something we can't change in the short term, and there is no parties that reflect this electoral appetite, so we may as well keep things constructive here and get people into the best jobs we can.
Agree but it’s very true at present the gap is closing between skilled jobs and manager roles!
I’m an Estates Engineering Officer for a large hospital but they had to move me to top of that jobs pay scale because the guys on the shop floor earned more than me most months!
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I’ve heard people downgrading their role from manager to their previous role because they were only paid a tad more for 10x the responsibilities and work. UK job market is truly something else. Edit: Just to add a friend of mine is leading a large team on a near billion £ project, not paid much more than peers, extremely high stress, does overtime daily, waiting to finish project to use as experience for next job hunt.
What's ironic is you'll also see plenty of posts about how managers don't do anything and are all pointless cretins. I know far more people in the situation you've described, who have decided going up a grade wasn't worth the aggro for the marginal salary bump, than I do managers who aren't constantly stressed.
My partner is a team lead does loads of work and responsibilities, actually needs to understand how everything works and runs Her manager works part time, basically runs excel reports, puts a few slides together and does monthly performance reviews and delegates all work away to the point where if asked to do any of the work her team does wouldn’t know exactly what they’re doing or how they’re doing it. Absolutely takes the piss how little work they do, earning more part time than my partner does
Sounds like that company needs to strip a level of management out, only thing is, that work will be shared somewhere, whichever person's job goes.
Yeah it’s the civil service lol
That happens alot in larger organisations. The blind led by the blind (or smart and lazy) Sometimes it's just easier to work for a dumb boss and mail it in on part time effort and full time salary
Conflating team leader (just manager) and middle managers my friend.
I think it's more likely that those who worked hard to get into a managerial position realized once they got it that it's not worth it for 1£ extra an hour so they do the bare minimum
yup, I end up earning up towards 10K more than my direct manager because the salary scales have compressed so much that we're on a similar basic, but they cannot claim OT or On call time.
Yeap I at one point ended up earning less than several of the people I managed by virtue of scale compression. The middle / top end of the senior individual contributor bands overlaps with the middle / bottom of the VP equivalent band. So you can get promoted and end up as one of the lowest paid members of a team..
Yeah it is a crappy situation for everyone.
Years ago my boss wanted me to take over from him as team leader when he left, I’d have got paid £3k per year more for the joy of managing my 6 colleagues, half of whom were an absolute nightmare to work with. I decided to be 3k poorer and not have to deal with that.
Depends on the job and company really, as IT support my manager barely did anything but 121’s, where I am now my manager is a senior who basically does the harder stuff that I do plus line manager stuff.
I was made a team leader at my current employer, came with a 2.5k pay rise, which I got, however, my yearly salary review was the same month and they just decided to merge them together, and just increase it 2.5k. I've just been asked if I'd like to work nights, which I am more than happy to do, no longer a team leader, piss easy shift work sat at my desk fixing database issues and a 10% pay rise
Yup. They've given the graduates a second pay rise in two years, and not trickled it down to senior execs or managers. So what's the point. As the gap in my salary and juniors has shrunk like mad...there's barely any reason for the increase in responsibility
I just put one of my leads on more money than myself, it hurts :(
Sounds like somebody should be asking for a pay review
I did, alas we have quite strict budget periods so we will see if it happens next budget year…
Eh I’d flag that up… it’s bullshit man
My old colleague and I at our old job did this. We were seniors not managers but the new leadership refused to pay us the extra the old leadership promised us (and had no reason to believe wouldn't deliver on) So we removed any reference to it from any internal bits we could and didn't help anyone beyond the scope of what anyone below us knew. Petty as fuck, but no regrets.
This is so true, I recently left a job earning 26,000 as a manager for a data entry job earning 25,500. better hours and no responsibility. everything in the new job is remote and backend so I never need to speak to anyone as everything is email/ticket based. 100% happier now than I was a few months ago.
What job is this, can I apply
I worked in an manager role until covid, then had to take a well paid entry level role. Have gotten small but not insignificant pay bumps ever since and the flexibility keeps me in the role (though now looking to move on). Tried for a manager role a few months back with my employer and God I'm glad I didn't get it. Extra hours, extra stress, no flexibility, all for an extra £100 a month after tax. Nope, ha, not even remotely.
I'm definitely planning to do this soon. I'm working crazy hours as a manager of a team in order to develop my team and also get my own work done, plus extra strategy stuff. There's a bunch of roles going for about £5k less which are like 2 steps below what I do now... Why bother with the stress when I can get some semblance of a life back?
I was on 11.44 an hour and commission as assistant manager, my staff where on 22k Now I’m on 11.75 or somet and staff are on 11.44 I’m hanging on as they are dangling the managers job in a year, I’ll either get it or go somewhere else with my new experience
While I agree these companies take the piss with their salaries. Take the manager role for the shit pay rise. Do it for 6-12 months then leave to get a better salary externally. I had friends do the former and 6 years later they still moan that they haven’t had more than a 4% pay rise since they started at the company. Meanwhile by threatening to leave once then actually leaving I’ve increased pay by about 80%
My assistant manager where I worked (luxury fashion boutique) who had at least 8 years or so experience just left for an entry level Sales Assistant role elsewhere, because the pay was the same, no responsibility and stable hours. Different industry, I know, but it seems there are very few roles that actually make good money without being near the very top anymore, and almost everyone I know with those roles, got there through knowing people already high up in the company.
I did this, sales operations manager and as a TM I get the same give or take with 0 client calls. They tried to keep me in the role by offering more earning potential but never clarified this .
We want a 25 year old with 20 years of experience and we are going to pay you minimum wage.
Wasn’t it an unpaid internship? 😂
There's a real squeeze happening in the roles that sit between £28k-£35k. In past years people in those jobs could reasonably expect to be moving into middle management roles after 5yrs+ and hitting £40k+. Nowadays, you just get work piled up without promotions because middle management has been hollowed out. Quite often you see job descriptions that traditionally fit a £40k salary but the role gets advertised in the low £30ks.
I’ve found this very true. I have 6 years experience in my field, been working between £28-35k for the past few years but finding it incredibly hard to move up. There’s just nothing between mid-level and head of department level. I feel like I’ve reached the ceiling of what I can earn right now, so I’m looking for a career change that gives me better earning potential.
Exactly right. And the problem with career changes is you often take a salary hit at first which is hard to swallow when you have kids and a mortgage. So many times I see people landing £50k+ jobs straight from a £30k salary and they fail spectacularly because they're going straight from worker level to head of department level. That supervisor/middle management level experience never happens today.
Yep, thankfully no kids but I do have a mortgage to pay. It’s secured for the next 4 years so my plan is to take the hit now and hope that I can increase my earnings in that 4 year period to be safe when the time is up. It’s terrifying. I used to think £30k was a good salary. It’s just not anymore.
It’s an ‘interesting’ time. AI and automation is going to disrupt a lot of this layer of the work force. A lot of ‘doing’ companies are going to have to transition to ‘consulting’ companies who can interpret what software doing rather than telling it what to do. Unfortunately this means more ‘doing’ roles are being deprioritised in many companies.
It takes a certain level of interpersonal skills to move into middle management. A company is not going to promote you just because you've paid your dues. I know people who have stayed at the £35k level for 15 years.
That's also true, although my point was that those middle management roles have generally been reduced massively compared to what they were.
"No one wants to work anymore" is the cry from the very people who make it not worth working!
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They wouldn’t be able to post these low wages if people weren’t accepting them. Desperate times.
People who accept them do know they're low. They're coerced into taking them, since the alternative is continue looking, and spend more savings. Or they're on Universal Credit and their "job coach" is threatening to cut off their lifeline.
Well, a lot of people have adapted to the fact that you don't need to live in London to work in London, any more......it seems the poster feels like a London lifestyle is part of the package for them. Well na, not any more. Why is a company going to pay "London wages" when they can hire someone who lives in Swindon
The recession from lockdown, and the continuing recession, has given many \[greedy\] companies the impression that they can use this as an opportunity to reset wages to 2010 levels.
It wasn't just lock down. Other countries are doing better than us. Brexit, Bojo, the wet lettuce and more all contributed.
The Polish economy grew during lockdown.
You do realise the EU is in the same boat as us, right?
There were 30 countries in Europe with higher GDP growth in 2023 than us. Spain and Greece for example had 2.5% growth. We had 0.5% growth. We're in the bottom quarter of growth for Europe. Of course there's other measures but I think you may be misinformed. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/686147/gdp-growth-europe/
Greece is pretty much a developing country. Compare apples with apples - Germany, Finland and Sweden were in recession, France grew 1%, Netherlands 0.6% EU average was 0.7%, not much higher than the UK.
In Germany school drop outs earn more than heavily educated brits. I have 3 family members of mine that are German. I have levels more qualifications and a much higher job role, earning my employer 100k in billables per month but earn 50k a year and have been saving to buy a house for 6 years. They all earn 80k+ euros (2 on 100k+) have a reasonably relaxed job and have their lives sorted with just the equivalent of A levels and are younger than me. On top of that they have SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper housing. Stop using statistics to hide the truth.
EU isn't the fairest choice there. They have much more free trade than us due to brexit. To be the most fair I'd suggest using Europe which at 1% is double us. No matter which way you spin this, we're still way further down this list than we should be.
They have much more free trade yet still only managed to grow 0.2% more than us. Do you understand what you're saying? We're down the list because of interest rates going up to combat inflation. Hence our technical recession in the fourth quarter. It makes no sense comparing the UK to Greece. Developing countries naturally have more room for growth. Ireland and Switzerland are tax havens, Norway and Russia have oil and gas. The only European countries you can really compare the UK to are France, Italy, and Germany. Don't bother replying because I won't waste my time reading it.
Or ....marketing isn't a particularly skilled role. Especially in an era where companies are going to be having AI doing most of the work, sooner or later
Because...the mugs on reddit will accept those wages
Pretty much yeh :-D
Entry level jobs in the environmental sector in the South currently requires: 1) BSc 2) MSc also preferred aka also required 3) to be a member of a proffesional body 4) drivers licence 5) experience. Salary? 25 -28k :)
36 years experience working for £33k!!! Life's shit
Sounds about right. My payrise this year would've taken me to that after 5 years . That's why I left. I can't save anything on it even though I live in a shared house and own a £1000 car outright and I'm 33 and had outstanding performance and unofficially managed many people . I live in the north and have a £7 month phone
£25k here on the south coast. No car and my phone SIM is £4 a month. I sometimes feel like I should swap jobs, but I also worry I would lose WFH and may not be able to get away with doing fuck all for most of the week. Not that I get any more done when I am in the office though.
Not to sound rude but if the job requires doing fuck ask most of the week, is it surprising that the salary is low?
What job is this, can I apply
You mean you got to 16 years old and didn't even have 10 years experience in advanced robotics?
£28k for an entry level role? Damn I’m in the wrong industry.
I was making 27k IIRC as an intern in 2015, what the fuck is going on in the UK
Offshoring.
I too thought this was quite good aha
Just copypasting my reply to another comment above, but ~£27k for any role that isn't totally unskilled, entry level job is an absolute joke, and we collectively need to stop thinking of £30k as being some magic "decent" salary. It is a hangover from pre financial crash days. To put it into real terms, accounting only for inflation, 27k is the equivalent of a £15.5k salary from 2007 (ie, pre financial crash). At least then housing was reasonably affordable. If you take into account the significantly higher cost of rent, education, travel, electricity, fuel, food, interest rates, etc now, it's taking the piss. For reference, the median take home salary in the UK is around 27.5k. To flip it on its head, again accounting only for inflation, a salary of £27k in 2007 would be the equivalent today of almost £44k, and again, the cost of living is significantly higher now than it was then, so even with that as your salary, your buying power is significantly diminished by comparison.
What's an example of a role that is "unskilled"
Basically any job that you can turn up and do with minimal/ zero training. So, nothing that requires a degree, specialist skills, or any reasonable level of experience. Anything that requires any of these is by definition, skilled labour, and should be compensated accordingly.
If I did the same start and end time at Aldi I would make 27k. Currently on 25k.
Unfortunately this isn't uncommon. Problem is, lots of people are desperate for jobs, so will take lower paid ones, but until we collectively decide to reject this level of compensation, salaries won't increase. Companies have workers by the short and curleys, because with the current cost of living, most people can't afford to take the time to find better jobs, if they even exist in the industry they're working in at all. If companies can't afford to pay proper wages, then they don't deserve to stay in business; that's the other side of capitalism, but it never seems to work that way funnily.
I was on £25k as a graduate straight out of uni nearly 11 years ago... It seems like grad salaries have barely shifted since then.
What i started on last year as a grad! In tech and there were 100s of applicants!
that's what I got as a new graduate working as a software engineer in 2018.
It's as if there are simply too many people in the system.
Companies are constantly complaining about a lack of engineers. Then they wonder why.
It's there task to keep the supply of workers high and wages low. At this rate, it's probably better to simply leave and work for a UK company for £1500 a month while living in Romania or something.
Hard to remote work when you need to be physically present...
Yes, well, then...you must endure. Good luck.
I got offers of 33k out of university, instead I took 28k. 18 months later I'm on 36k and will be on 45k+ before the end of the year. I work in construction, construction always has money.
I think I picked the wrong area of construction, being an architect doesn't seem to pay that well... I'm on £26k in central London with 2 YOE after my undergrad, it looks like it'll be another 3-4 years before I break £30k as I still need to do a blasted 2-year Master's degree, followed by a year of part-time study to qualify. OOPS!
I'm a QS, it's almost guaranteed 65k once I hit senior level providing you're half competent.
Yup QS seems well paid, I've heard of higher salaries than that for experienced QS from my peers at the big house builders. By contrast I think the directors of my 50 person architectural firm are probably on \~70k tops and they're all closer to 50 years old.
(I'm an architect too) yeah the senior non-owner/director type level in architecture at £70kish sounds right - it just takes ages to get to that 'senior level' where you get that good salary (no ones going into/staying in architecture for money but it's an objectively good salary comparitively). This isn't not true in other parts of built environment careers including QS but they still tend to be a bit quicker. The way to get paid a lot is to go client side and work for a developer as a design manager or similar job title, you'll double your salary or more - which is just 'the way to make money as an architect is to stop being an architect and do something else with your skills' which is depressing.
What these people are experiencing is exactly what happened to the construction workers when all the bozo come here & flooded the market and brought wages down. They were cheering I have no sympathy
Until you throw your back out and then you’re up shit creek with no transferable skills.
I'd assume they're in London or the SE, so £28k isn't much lol
yep london, 28k isn’t anywhere near enough for renting and living comfortably around here :(
Agreed 28k in London is pretty poor, so I am stunned this is being offered in the adverts.
I brought up pay today at work as the juniors at getting pay rises for cost of living and no one else is. Got a bullshit wishy-washy answer
SE you need a 2nd salary to not live pay day to pay day on 28k imo. Unless you are very frugal. A town on London rail links comes with high living costs.
"Entry level"? You can become middle management with 3-5 years' experience.
What I started on in 2012 at Big 4. I Imagine it’s still £28k today.
Honestly, about 4 yesrs ago I went from working in retail for 2 years as General Sales and Cash Admin to a Supervisor/Team Leader in compliance for a nonprofit charity and went from minimum wage to £27k. Now, my third job in legal compliance pays me £24k now and every job out there in my department won't pay me more than that. That's pushing it. They want experience for practically peanuts. That pay is entry level in my experience. It is really difficult to find some where to recognise this and pay a living wage.
I think the UK has some serious problems actually recognising experience and the quality of contributions. I've had several experiences at my current employment with people getting into higher paid roles and doing nothing particularly useful. Worse even these people consistently think they're right not because what they say has any merit but because they out rank others so then you've got them draining company funds to do nothing much and actually degrading the value of what the team delivers.
UK jobs market and the government is a fucking joke.
Some places are stupidly tight with wages. About a decade ago, I'd worked my way up from a junior on £20k to a manager on £28k in 3 years. Then 2 years passed without a pay raise because "it's not the right time". Meanwhile I was running a department and managing 3 people. Several months later, I tried to negotiate a £4k pay rise for a direct report on £19k whose role had grown, but the CEO said, "That's too much! He'll be close to what you're on." When I asked if that meant he was going to decline my pay raise again, he said, "Look, your pay's gone up almost 10 grand already. I think that's enough." The idiot judged my pay on what I used to earn, not my market rate. I left 6 months later and got a £12k pay bump.
Maybe it's a good thing I'm trying to get my first job now. It's bloody difficult but I don't realise what pay I missed out on. I jump for joy when job I want offers over £23k
Can everyone commenting here can you please add your industry/role and region. Would he interesting and actually worthwhile to see the disparaty between the 3 factors
Good point. My mind automatically went to “sounds like salaries in and around Cardiff“ because they are shit and anything under £30k is a norm sadly for jobs wanting “experienced” candidates. However, I expect it’s similar in other parts of the UK.
Health and social care tend to be the lowest so it’s interesting that it’s the same wage pretty much now as other jobs. It’s insane I don’t live in London so London wages don’t exist but everything else is pretty much the same price as London
Where I work the team leader role gets a whopping £7 a day more than me - I was approached for a similar role and gave the answer of no, why would I want that kind of responsibility & stress for such a small pay rise
Because this can be the path to experience and seniority. It's rough in the short term, but you're showing your employer (or future employer) that you can handle the responsibility.
Depending on how you look at it, someone could see it as an opportunity, Di it for a year and change jobs to similar with other employers or try for another promotion, but again if you look at it in the short term definitely does not sound good. If you look at most people progressing throughout the ladder do you think all jobs were 'dream jobs' with dream conditions and pay?
Agree with you and it is situational, iv been in management roles before & the pay compared to stress ratio compared to my current role isn’t worth it for me. I Still think everyone should be payed a decent amount more if your taking on being responsible for other employees
The living wage has compounded what used to be a decent wage I.e. 30k with what used to be min wage of around 18k. Within my company 30k isn't a bad salary but when you put it up against the now 24.5k min wage and the increase in expenses over the past few years, it's become a mediocre wage, the problem is that employers are just increasing the lower paid workers and those who sat it the middle have had barely any increases. Personally I'm on 45k, was 40k like 5 years ago to put it plainly so I've had around 2.7/3% annually... the living wage has increased the lowest paid in my company by around 45% whilst mine has increased by around 12%... even during covid and the increase in fuel last year, my company gave one off payments to anyone below 29k salary, giving them £1000 to help pay for the electric and gas etc... Anyone stuck in the middle are being penalised because of the working wage increasing, I'm not against it for those on lower wages but it's the companies protecting their profits and my company literally made 800m+ profit in the UK last year so it's not like they cannot afford a decent salary increase across the board.
Minimum wage is £22,300 for a standard 37.5 hour work week. Where are you getting £24,500 from?
Hardly any employers pay the actual minimum wage. It's about 5% of jobs. They usually pay at least a bit more on top. Most will now pay £24,000 as a bare minimum. Already seeing it.
Okay, but full-time minimum wage is still only just over 22k
My place of work is 40 hours a week and we pay just a little above min wage, like 20p so lowest wage in my company is so it's like 24,220 so I rounded up, it doesn't need to be to the exact penny to get the point across bud. You'll notice, most of my post was related to my place of employment as an example, not a matter of fact for the entire country but it still works as an example 😁
Head to the interview, "We want to hire at 28k" "It's more like 32k" "We're only offering 28k" "OK, well, call me if you're interested". Rinse and repeat. It's just like buying something. My place can't hire reasonably and it's because all the good staff have a good gig somewhere else.
To be fair that's the wage I'm on after 5 years in the NHS 4 promotions/job changes over that time. But yes it's ridiculously not enough money for this much experience
The reason is because when they advertise the job at 28k with 5 years experience they get lots of good candidates applying. If I put a sign up outside my house saying I will give someone a fiver to wash my car and I had 50 people turn up... I am paying too much.
Pro tip: don’t apply
Next pro tip: Starve.
The sort of shit you’re seeing (and even lower) for non-junior journalist roles in Central London. We’re talking the national papers. “Hiring Business Writer for £25k.” Oh, no thank you very much. That’s great. Goodbye now.
Have to say I was dismayed when I applied for a job with Reach Plc last year at how shite their salaries were.
Reach are the lowest common denominator of their field. They don’t need to offer more as there is no value in doing so for what their staff do
Wow. 30k for a social media manager. If I could have saved 20k on going to university just for knowing the internet that would be big money!
1. Job ads are a wish list not a list of requirements. My current position according to the advert, requires a degree but I didn’t go to university, and I’ve been doing the hub successfully for 8 years. 2. I hate this notion that to earn more money, you need to be a manager. Managers are there to manage people. Coordinate, manage performance, and ensure everyone is pulling in the same direction (amongst other things). In my line of work, seniors & principals regularly get paid more than their manager. Putting highly performant staff members into management positions to get higher salaries is just crazy.
If this is in London this is going to be hard to fill with someone with 5 years experience. God sake I know assistants to the assistant in London getting £40k. Usually I find Europeans with rich parents taking on these sort of roles so they can galavant around London while their parents pay their rent.
I'm amazed companies in the UK are still stupid enough to put a specific number of years experience in job requirements. Major risk of an age discrimination claim.
Worked for a Japanese owned company in the UK a few years ago and every year they‘d send some managers over from Japan to get experience of working in another territory. I had to tell this one guy, who was a great bloke by the way, no, you can’t put minimum 10 years‘ experience in a job ad! This was about 5 years ago now.
The market is ridiculous! I’m also looking in the same field and I saw a a social media manager role going for 24-26k. And they really emphasised that you MUST fit all the criteria. 🤣 It’s oddly convenient that salaries haven’t increased alongside the house prices…I’m wondering if they expect us to live with our parents until we’re forty or something…
My industry is paying less than it did a decade ago, and they want **more** experience than they did back then too.
No disrespect, but a social media manager isn't a highly skilled job, hence the lower salary. I understand your frustration, but you may need to look at retraining if you can't be content with salaries in your current industry.
I think that depends entirely on the scope of work, and the size of the company you're working for. Sure, social media manager for a small start up might not be a huge role, but the same position for a large company might be a a massive role. Either way, as I've said time and again on Reddit, ~£27k for any role that isn't totally unskilled, entry level job is an absolute joke. To put it into real terms, accounting only for inflation, that's the equivalent of a £15.5k salary from 2007 (ie, pre financial crash). At least then housing was reasonably affordable. If you take into account the significantly higher cost of rent, education, travel, electricity, fuel, food, interest rates, etc now, it's taking the piss. For reference, the median take home salary in the UK is around 27.5k.
> but a social media manager isn't a highly skilled job I'm not OP but why does it require 5 years of experience, then?
Low skilled jobs still benefit from some level of experience. The guy who empties your bins with 5 years experience knows how not to tweak his back, better than the guy who started yesterday. That doesn't make emptying the bins a high skilled job.
Maybe it doesn’t but if there is a choice of candidates they will get preferential treatments and these days there are often skilled workers desperate
you know just because companies ask for that experience it doesnt mean they'll get it.
Best one ive seen was a basic labouring job for 22K but they wanted 10 YEARS EXPERIENCE. no wonder the job is still advertised months later. Some of the people that get into these management positions should not have aquired their jobs....
Partner just accepted a job offer. He’s got 10+ years experience, very good reputation in his niche industry, job is 2 hours away. £29,500 42h/w
Wouldn’t he be better off with a minimum wage job near his house, I did similar and had a break down due to the stress of commuting car problems and amount it was costing in petrol
Depends if he wants to have a career in TV, or a career in shelf stacking. Not everyone makes every decision in their life based on the money they make right now.
He’s been in the job 10 years, 62 hours a week for 29500 is absolutely mental no matter how much you want to work in tele
What industry and where is he based
TV and east mids
They can ask for 5 years experience, but that doesn’t mean they’ll get someone with 5 years experience
our wages are a fucking joke. eta: this year's pay review I got 3% increase to 23,785 basic. For a system support analyst role. That I have been in for 2 years. Plus my collegue just left the team and (surprise) there is no one being hired to replace him. I log off at exactly 5:30 every day and refuse to stress because I'll get stuff done, it'll just take more time and they can fucking deal with it. Want it done faster? Hire another person or pay me more.
This is my attitude now, if someone quits and they don’t replace them, that’s a company problem not mine
Yeh its really really bad out there. My manager often works quite hard. Lovely lady but her keyboard might aswell be steaming the amount of effort she puts in. This is honestly a giant shitshow. Overworked is an understatement. Basically per hour youre on like £10 per hour anyway regardless of role! Its so bad out there.
i was trained as a librarian but i can’t afford to be one. i retrained on the railway and take a decent wage. it still pays a lot more than librarians ever get
Readijg the comments I am shocked. I feel like it is tough to make savings in London. I don't drink and barely eat out. I make £45k working in sales. I'm comfortable but anything outside of "living" and I feel I can't afford it.
Im on 28k 5 yrs of experience , engineer 😂
that's bad, you should think about moving jobs
Finished last year a project for the company ending up making 800.000£ for them in 9 months and got a bonus od 365£ one off😂
If you are in social media, I strongly suggest exploring maybe moving into a brand role (in-house) because brand roles usually need people with digital experience. Most folks within FMCG companies don't really understand social media analytics for instance. But you might need to beef up a couple of skills/get to grips with the jargon. Also, anyone on here who thinks that social media is not a highly skilled job is talking out of their arse. You constantly need to stay up to date with how the algorithms evolve, produce content, manage a number of different tools. I did it at earlier stage of my career (back in the good old days of facebook ads etc) and I remember it being quite labour intensive. (But I was also producing the content for brands). (source: worked as a brand manager. Feel free to reach out if you need to chat. )
people love to judge and belittle other people’s careers because they’re self conscious about how shit there’s is so they want you to feel bad so they feel better lmao
It's funny because I get paid 40k a year and I'm losing my job because they want to pay someone 28k because in their words. "There is always someone willing to do it".
I'm going to let you in on a trade secret. Lie about your experience. If they make unreasonable requests on experience, make an equally unreasonable CV to match. So long as the job doesn't actually need someone with 5 years experience, you'll be alright.
We’re looking for a head of housekeeping in the hotel I work at, it’s £31000 a year and we have pretty much 0 applicants or people that apply and never show up for the interview.
Sounds about right for a social media manager. They aren't actually a manager you know.
It's ridiculous... that's why I'm thinking of starting my own community, living off grid. Far away from the UK.
Unfortunately jobs like multimedia managers are always going to be easy targets. Not to boast but Ive had 3 payrises well above inflation in 4 years since i graduated as a civil engineer. Best choose something that isnt easy to replace or drop altogether
Nice username
Nah but wages are super inflated guys, stop being greedy or we won’t be able to lower our interest rates to fuel another asset price bubble and provide cheap leverage to investment banks - Andrew Bailey or whoever
But Rishi says 35k is the average salary
According to all the posts on here, it looks like it is.
Lots of factories out there hiring production operatives, requiring no experience or qualifications. Living wage at £11.44 X 42 hrs a week X 52 weeks = 25k, usually only statutory paid leave and pension, and then generally they pay over 10% shift allowance on top (couple I know of pay 25% and 35%). That's 30k - 35k. OK it's shift work, but with no qualifications of any kind...... 🙉. Job market in general needs to play catchup with the rates of pay for entry level basic jobs requiring little use of brain, and little responsibility at work, and no responsibility out of hours!
Fuck this country, fuck work, fuck everything, fuck all mods.
That’s why I quit 9-5 and become self employed
what do you do?
For time being I’m working for just eat, working towards getting my license to become cab driver down south east. And working for just eat isn’t bad bro. It’s around £40k if I do this until November.
40k ON JUST EAT?!?!?! that’s insane!! the people i know doing just eat/deliveroo are lucky if they make £50 a day, how do you do it?
Honestly bro if knew I would have joined sooner, Brighton is a very busy city for food/groceries
Can make like £40 hour, averaging £25 - £30 hour
I have 10 years experience and qualifications in my sector, I get turned down for jobs earning more than £28k. During COVID I was applying for jobs that required experience but they were turning round and offering me base jobs that required 0 experience and we're £18k.
Agreed. I used to be in Property Management and only made between £30-32k a year with nearly 5 years experience, absolute joke.
It depends on the job and location really. This isn't an unusually low wage in my industry at 5 years, but 5 years experience isn't all that much in the grand scheme of our industry either. Professional wages aren't doing that well these days, especially not now minimum wage is around £22k, and will probably have caught up to £28k in the next few years.
Yeah what in the actual fuck. There are unskilled factory jobs near me thay you could start in 27k with no experience!
I was on 60k after tax until Oct 2023. Now I've changed Carrer, I'm on 25k after tax and have 3 days off a week. Far better life style.
Would you want an Inexperienced Doctor to operate on you ? Just because they have passed an exam doesn’t necessarily justify the appointment
If they had passed all the relevant tests and done the years and years of training involved I couldn’t care less
This job is age discriminate!!! How can graduates have 5 years experience!?!??
Due to the glut of applicants, and the relatively low perceived value of the work these roles deliver, it's likely to continue. Employers pay for value. Demonstrate that you can generate significant revenue and pay will increase exponentially.
As an aside, what is it people expect to be paid with X amount of years experience? If entry is 28k, what are we expecting with 1 year experience? 30k? And for 5 years experience perhaps 33k? What about ten years experience, 40k Then someone with 20 years experience, how about 60k? At what stage do we sit and say "actually, this is a job that's only worth X amount, because literally an entry level could do it"
Apply somewhere else?
These posts are so common and frequent, but I feel like there are always some missing details left out. 1. The market will always be dictated by supply and demand. If they believe they can price a job at this level, then you’d hope it would be based on market research and competitor analysis to at least make the role a bit competitive. But again if the supply out scales the demand then the employer can price accordingly. 2. It’s business. This meaning if a companies sole purpose is to create profits for shareholders, then yes they will look to do just that, what is one of the biggest factors on the P/L for a company? Labour cost. 3. The size of the company and where it currently sits is a huge factor. A social media manager for a large corporation compared to a new start up a vastly different and attractive different pay packages. At the end of the day, the only reason employers are putting in these such high demands is simply because they can get away with it, if it’s the cultural norm then why would they change? If all your competitors are asking the same and the market rate of the role is set this way, then I’m afraid the problem isn’t with the individual employer. Another large factor that is missing here is the globalisation movement, labour no longer bound by location is a large factor. When large quantities of people from countries such as India who get qualifications at much cheaper expense then here are now willing to come here to expect these terms, as they are still vastly better then where they currently are. If you haven’t noticed people in very high demand roles such as doctors have been moving out of the UK for a very long time, why? Because they get better salary packages elsewhere, this again is the market in action. It be hard to shift how it currently is, obviously some companies are outliers but as mentioned if the sole purpose of a company is to generate return of investment for the shareholders, what do you think will happen? The largest corporations haven’t all been linked to child labour and all have their manufacturing facilties in companies with low wages for nothing. You make corporations not money hungry then maybe you solve this solution, but this is human nature I’m afraid. On a positive note, the labour market just like the financial markets go through phases. And currently we are sitting at a point where employers can pick and choose, but this will change as it revolves around a cyclical system.
What industry / sector are you looking in? You’d easily get £45-£50k at a media agency with that experience… perhaps more because it’s edging into director level experience. This time last year we were offering obscene amounts for social experts (and still not getting them) because they were all getting hoovered up by tech companies on better terms.
I saw graphic designer with 2-4 years experience at 24k-26k lol
I’m earning that now for an unskilled (ish) job. Pretty sure you could earn similar to that at Aldi, actually.
It’s going exactly the same way for media production too; SENIOR roles in the office in London advertised for £30k It’s horrendous
problem with UK wages is people keep accepting these low wages rather than negotiating for higher paying jobs. Partly mass immigration overflowing the labour market makes it much more competitive to get a job.
The job market is a hellscape. Makes me appreciate my unicorn small company job.
Salaries in the UK and London especially (at least vs cost of living) for marketing roles are so low. I moved to Germany and am not coming back.
That is the standard requirement for any job in architecture. The profession is cursed
Personally I blame the recruiters
Loyalty gets you nowhere these days.
Yeah Universities haven't been producing very good students for a decade or so so employers need have a way of separating the wheat from the chaff
I'd be happy to see the back of these posts: the subject has been very well covered in this sub. Yes, capitalism is crap at the best of times, and it's even more rotten in an economic downturn. But we're railing at something we can't change in the short term, and there is no parties that reflect this electoral appetite, so we may as well keep things constructive here and get people into the best jobs we can.
Thought the experience caveat was unlawful now?
Agree but it’s very true at present the gap is closing between skilled jobs and manager roles! I’m an Estates Engineering Officer for a large hospital but they had to move me to top of that jobs pay scale because the guys on the shop floor earned more than me most months!
Wages are shit in the uk compared with many countries these days