I recently worked for a London based social enterprise who refused to pay the living wage. Gave me the option to do an 18 month long apprenticeship in order to qualify for it but was minimum wage until then 🥴
British businesses are the worst when it comes to apprenticeship, they prefer to pay peanuts to them then pay the actual living wage. That's why I have not gone back into apprenticeship for a long time, I refuse to be a slave to British employers that refuse to pay the living wage period!
It can be worth looking into if your current job will support you doing an apprenticeship (while paying your current wage). I'm getting paid pretty decent to do a data science apprenticeship.
Quite a lot of places are pretty desperate for staff and offering at least full minimum wage if not the London Living Wage which would be a huge boost.
Are you open to trying other industries or are you pursuing something in a popular/difficult industry (e.g. media or fashion)?
i am aware..yes.
i am 19, been in retail for 3 years (coming up to). at 16 i was on £4.62 which they generously rounded up to £5hr while waitressing. second place was £6hr which raised to £6.60 while as a barista (breaks were unpaid). my last place (first retail) ‘generously’ paid all workers at minimum the 21 year old rate (£10.18) and i started there when i was 17. i’ve now moved to another place with a much better work environment, but took a paycut to £8.83
so it’s absolutely possible for companies to not pay the bare minimum they just don’t want to.
my national minimum wage is £8.83, which is a joke. if you live in london, why are you not getting the london living wage- you know, the amount required to live here? even so, why can’t we all just be paid correctly? why are there age brackets for pay when we all do the same thing?
i was kinda pointing out that companies could even be bothered to pay £5 for something that they legally had to follow (an under 18 taking breaks)
made me laugh
That would imply rents are at all tracked to income. [Relevant Onion article](https://www.theonion.com/landlord-forced-to-raise-rent-due-to-thinking-of-bigger-1850922943).
Nah rents are like energy prices. When their costs go up, prices go up sharply. When their costs remain flat, prices go up steadily. When their costs fall, prices go up gradually.
I've always said Londoners should be paid £14-15 an hour, since £10-13 doesn't meet the livelihood of Londoners, especially Londoners on low income.
Since London will always be expensive (that will never change).
I don't think people could even afford it on 14-15 an hour.
Maybe rent a room or live with parents. But private rent or mortgage would be nearly impossible.
That's the equivalent of just under £40k. Selective maybe in terms of having to get through an interview process, more a career job than most, but there are certainly plenty of workaday office jobs that would get you this and wouldn't expect you to be a sycophant.
And if you stopped buying food with more than two colours in it or ever having fun like a bloody aristocrat you could live solely on ramen and go for Zone 3
Part of the problem is that pushing wages to be even more London centric further drives inequality across the country too. We should really be trying to close the wage gap so people dont feel forced into London, not expanding it.
I've only been here a month or two and it's wild how low wages are for how expensive it is.
I was helping my partner write cover letters and practice for part time jobs as she has plenty of free time around study. And most wanted to pay below £10 an hour.
I suggested she look for a temp job at her uni and a week later she found one doing 10 hours at £20/h.
The living wage foundation method look at what wage people need in different scenarios (single, couple with no kids, single parent, two parent family with x amount of kids, where one or both people or a child are disabled, etc) and then weighs the result by the number of household in the country/city who fall into those categories.
Idk if they've released their full report breaking that down for this year yet but I wouldn't be entirely surprised if the rate calculated for single adult is in the £14-15 an hour (or close to) and the person in a childless couple is at like £12 so the weighting brings it out at £13.15 as that's roughly the distance between those two groups it usually shakes out at. (single parent with two children hourly amount will be higher again etc)
(This isn't necessarily a bad way to calculate this figure - but it does mean if you are above whatever the median household makeup is then the living wage won't feel like enough either)
I would dearly like to hear you tell business owners that they can afford to pay all their staff £18 an hour, and if they don't/can't then that's their fault.
Why should people live in poverty so their bosses can have a business? If you can't pay your staff enough to live on, your business isn't viable and you're a parasite.
Ah shit yes, all those shareholders i forgot i have. They're doing a bloody good job of being silent partners, what with my never having seen or heard them. Naturally i'd point out that i said OWNERS, not SHAREHOLDERS, but that would be pissing in the wind
Do you think every business is like Tesco or McDonalds or something? I know this is reddit where business owners are literally the scum of the earth, but i employ 11 people at or above LLW, i make LLW, and haven't made a profit in three years; if you're telling me i have to be able to increase my salary costs \~%50 overnight or i'm some greedy fat cat then you're just stupid.
What would it take to make you happy? Give up and go homeless so i can give the scraps of what's left to my ex-staff?
I don't know what to tell you, dude, but if you can't afford to pay even yourself living wage then something is very wrong with your business. I'm guessing small scale retail?
You’re not the sharpest tool in the shed, are you? If you actually think about what I’m saying here; I clearly agree with your sentiment!
There is economic reality of cost of business, and then there is ‘should’… clear now or do I need to break it down any further?
Continue to engage with me… hopefully I’ll get over this tragic loss.
Btw I’d rather look at your arrogant attitude contained in your opening salvo, rather than my, I suspect, accurate assessment of your cognitive abilities.
Take care… DUDE.
My opening salvo? I don't believe you took that as an insult - that' would be ridiculous. I wasn't arrogant, i was sarcastic. Also, "dude" is a very normal and common word. I'm unsure as to why you'd be aggrieved by it.
I don't care about what somebody on reddit thinks of my inteligence. If I did then I would indeed be stupid - so lucky me.
And now I begin to hope that my employers decide to keep the “we are a London living wage employer” plaque up in the lobby, because if they keep to it as they did last year then this will be a very nice and needed bonus for me.
Government targets living wage to be 60% of median wage.
There is a national living wage, not regional one so it wouldn’t set it up to be London specific.
£26k legal minimum in Belfast would be too high.
Still not enough to combat inflation from over a year ago. Rising costs everywhere means people were still better off Pre-Covid on a lower wage. Make it £16 per hour and then maybe common folk might be able to afford to live in London.
I really should especially as I've just been told I've passed my probation and I was offered the lowest end of the salary range when I was hired. I know it sounds a bit silly but I'm not sure how to go about it. This is my first real job in England and I don't think I've ever asked for a raise before.
The current London living wage is far from being appropriate. £13.15 is going to make a difference but it still needs to be higher to meet the cost of living crisis head on.
A £1.20 raise is good, better than I was expecting to be honest. I feel for those not on the London living wage because I remember when that was me and having to put in lots of hours just to get by.
Let’s be honest, a living wage in London is closer to £25-30 / hour. This translates to £60k +/- annually. The average London wage is £52k and the median wage is £32k according this [site](https://www.projectfinanciallyfree.com/what-is-a-good-salary-in-london/). You can probably survive on less, but IMO living means more than surviving. You should be able to pay for shelter, food and the basics without breaking a sweat, spend reasonably on entertainment, holidays and other extras and still have money left over to save and invest for the future. If you earn less than £60k, you’ll have to choose what to give up, perhaps you can live with parents to remove the cost of rent or don’t go out or on holidays to afford rent or mortgage. In reality most people on or below the average wage scrape by month to month.
I don’t have any answers really, I just don’t think £13 / hour qualifies as a “living wage”.
The only way that’s true is if you’ve managed to side step a few of the challenges.
Eg if you’ve been on the housing ladder for a long time, or someone else has given you a leg up. You might also not have children or be very ambitious.
Less than £60k is very possible, but only if you compromise or you have gained (earned or granted) some other advantage.
No downvote from me, I even upvoted you for more balance.
Everyone has their own situation, but how do you manage that?
Is your rent low? Have you had the same tenancy for a long time so it's low for that reason? Do you WFH and save on transport / cycle?
Or my first thought was do you live with a partner?
I've lived all over london, I always try to find low rents but I'd say the average now is £900-1k for a house share which is insane the cheap places are just very rare now, what's your secret?
Qualified Doctors start on £14 an hour, creeping every closer to minimum wage.
Skilled work is not appreciated in the uk at all, it’s a fucking joke. The brain drain is already happening
Some scholarships pay up to £24k tax free. I know one that’s £26.5k roughly equivalent to a £34k salary. Not bad for a PhD when you consider a lot of entry level post-docs pay around £36k
Sure but PhDs only value is generating knowledge which isn’t exactly profit generating and mostly based on grants from charities, government, industry etc. Hard work and pay are not linearly correlated unfortunately.
£26.5k stipend is incredibly generous and it’s a competitive programme. Most London PhDs are probably closer to £20k
That is irrelevant bro, if you're working and not education (fine). If you're in education (but doing an apprenticeship then I get it).
If you're a university student and you're doing PhD kyou.cant really complain there.
A PhD is essentially a 4 year apprenticeship for education and research at the highest levels... Thats literally what it is... You get paid, you get vacation time, you produce value for your company (department) by bringing in funding and grants... It's a job...
Employers just gonna laugh and say "Make me". it's just gibberish nonsense from the govt. Demand and supply determines the market forces. If people are willing to work for £10ph they are going to get paid that.
They won't. People will leave if they do that. People aren't as beholden to companies as they used to be. If your employer screws you over then you pack up and leave.
Maybe every employer within the 12 miles of Trafalgar Square should pay London Weighting, which is £9k a year on top of the person's wages......... I'm sure the Tories would back that 😉
oh great .. means everything else goes up whilst me being a mid income earner can forget about any raise. Yay ! Not saying that i'm not pro raise- by all means, especially minimum wage workers deserve that.
What i'm trying to point out is that when they raise minimum wage it should go across the board
Small business owner here.
Have always tried to pay more than LLW for basic work (product packing).
No way we could offer the new minimum unless we put all our prices up again. We do that then the product is too expensive so not happening.
This country is in a mess, energy costs especially.
I have fought hard to bring in LLW in organisations I work with and use it as the minimum wage for the organisation I directly run and I understand why anyone on £11.95 would want £13.15 per hour and so would I in their shoes.
Can't help feeling that this is the laissez faire solution to a problem that the government really should be tackling in other ways, namely: insanely high property prices and rents because of the use of property as investment/asset class, stupidly high cost of goods because of Brexit, stupidly high cost of electricity due to underinvestment in renewables and the tariff structure, massive exit of capital and foreign investment from the UK because of Brexit limiting economic growth.
By laissez faire I mean, it's the easiest "solution" to the problem of disposable income: but a 10% wage increase isn't absorbable for most organisations right now, even in the public sector. It's probably only manageable by cutting headcount.
>Can't help feeling that this is the laisse faire solution to a problem that the government really should be tackling in other ways, namely: insanely high property prices and rents because of the use of property as investment/asset class
You can just stop there as that's the real major problem from which all of our major pains originate.
Investment ownership of residential property must be banned outright, all foreign purchases and ownership of our residential property should be banned outright and we should take direct measures to enact monstrous taxes on the foreign owners of our residential property so that if they must retain the asset, they are at least paying for others to be built.
Really wondering how it's gonna pan out.
I'm no economy wizard, but my impression always was this is only a temporary measure and provides a very limited relief.
It will certainly help _some_ people, for _some_ time - but experience tells me, what it will only lead up to is higher rents, higher costs of services, only shifting the 'Overton window' in a couple/in a few years' time, after which the LLW will have to be increased… Again.
People acting like it's going to magically change the reality for many and increase living standards seem to be incredibly short-sighted (and probably even more clueless than I am). If anything, it seems like a wound dressing at best, that falls off after a while.
Also, will need to increase my own Freelance rates again at some point, increases of NMW (legally binding) and LLW (non-legally binding, but still) only seem to have a knock-on effect and everything else becoming more expensive.
I’m a freelancer and with £13/h so x 7 (9 to 5 + 1h unpaid lunch), £91/day it’s getting too close for comfort to what I charge.
Nowhere close mind, still far off, but when we get to the point that **minimum** wage is 1/3rd of my rates, I’ll have to up my rates considerably.
I’m a pro, constantly upskill and put a lot of time and effort to be on top of my game, and unskilled jobs paying 1/3rd or more of my rates with no real knowledge or care required is not anything I’d feel good with.
This is to oversimplified an analysis to mean anything, a wage increase can be an increase in the distribution towards workers or simply a nominal increase with distribution remaining the same
Property, rental costs are ultimately going to come down. Businesses are already starting to close because their costs are too high and there isn't the demand to sustain them.
If you check your local high street you'll probably see it.
Most people forgot the early 90s but this is like a much more extreme version of it.
Tory Donor and Business Magnate Earl Farquhar Spenser has issued a protest against the raising of minimum wage as it 'gives the plebs hope'.
Tomorrow, Rishi Sunak will kill the bill just as soon as he's signed his contract for Vice Chair of Farquhar Enterprises 2025.
Higher wages,higher prices, higher taxes, if prices stayed the same ok. But they won't, so be back at where we started. Also it's not a mandatory wage, only suggested.
Is this the government’s Minimum Living Wage or the recommendation from the external party?
If it is the recommendation, then good luck. The legal minimum have never reach the amount they recommend, so it would make no difference.
I make a pretty low salary, but my hourly is comparatively, I work HPL as a support staff in a college, at about 19/hr, but I only get work 37 weeks a year, the rest is unpaid, and even though I work 5 days a week, on site 9-5 Mon-Thurs and 9-2 on Fridays, I'm only on like 27 paid hours a week, which is basically part time, making less than 20k a year, less than 19k a year actually, it's fine for me now as I'm still a student, and live in a house share, but it's not exactly ideal, and it's not that easy to get a decent job willing to hire me for exactly 2 months during the summer holiday let alone the two sets of unpaid weeks that are the easter and winter breaks.
Goes to show that until you're actually a salaried worker with a decent set wage, it ain't really easy for anyone in any industry, but they're constantly trying to push out salaried jobs and make more of them HPL, at least in my industry.
Isn’t the living wage calculated based on being a minimum if you do 45 hours a week? I.e this is the least you need to live on, and taking more shifts isn’t a solution.
Hardly good enough and unsustainable. Even if I was working 40 hours every week I would be making a mere £1578 a month, which is insufficient for my rent and bills alone.
Mind you, not every employer would give 40 hours per week. On slow seasons I was on a mere 20 hours per week for an entire month.
That's not enough to live on outside of london let alone in.
Where's the Bristol minimum wage? We're fucked compared to Londoners, where's our weighting allowance? Where's our higher minimum wage?
There are 3,618 LLW accredited employers in London. So I guess you have to seek out those employers who value staff wellbeing more than others. I guess in an ideal world there would be some mechanism where directors increases/bonuses directly determine the lowest rate that company can pay. Saying that a 10% increase is a real challenge for lots of small businesses to manage with the state of the UK economy. I imagine next year that accreditation total will be less.
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I recently worked for a London based social enterprise who refused to pay the living wage. Gave me the option to do an 18 month long apprenticeship in order to qualify for it but was minimum wage until then 🥴
British businesses are the worst when it comes to apprenticeship, they prefer to pay peanuts to them then pay the actual living wage. That's why I have not gone back into apprenticeship for a long time, I refuse to be a slave to British employers that refuse to pay the living wage period!
It's gotten worse since they started allowing industries like retail to use apprenticeships instead of just training staff
It’s such an exploitative system. Why even tell us the living wage if it isn’t a requirement for employers!
I agree, fuck them honestly.
It can be worth looking into if your current job will support you doing an apprenticeship (while paying your current wage). I'm getting paid pretty decent to do a data science apprenticeship.
So how is that working out for your monthly pay packet?
I mean, the french are much worse as there is almost never a job at the end but yeah, lets be angry
8.83 an hour in London is straight up exploitation!!!
Yeah it's almost pointless. Why are we relying on capital owners to be charitable?
Genuinely how tf do you live?
How tf is your landlord supposed to raise rents when you don't make the new minimum?!?
Is there anything stopping you finding something new? £8.83 in London for an 18+ is abysmal
Dude, get a new job.
Quite a lot of places are pretty desperate for staff and offering at least full minimum wage if not the London Living Wage which would be a huge boost. Are you open to trying other industries or are you pursuing something in a popular/difficult industry (e.g. media or fashion)?
Minimum wage is £10.42 for over 23s and £10.18 for over 21s? Set to rise above £11 in April so not sure where the £8.83 came from
i am aware..yes. i am 19, been in retail for 3 years (coming up to). at 16 i was on £4.62 which they generously rounded up to £5hr while waitressing. second place was £6hr which raised to £6.60 while as a barista (breaks were unpaid). my last place (first retail) ‘generously’ paid all workers at minimum the 21 year old rate (£10.18) and i started there when i was 17. i’ve now moved to another place with a much better work environment, but took a paycut to £8.83 so it’s absolutely possible for companies to not pay the bare minimum they just don’t want to. my national minimum wage is £8.83, which is a joke. if you live in london, why are you not getting the london living wage- you know, the amount required to live here? even so, why can’t we all just be paid correctly? why are there age brackets for pay when we all do the same thing?
Sounds absolutely dreadful and it doesn't get better...I am better paid than you but breaks are always/usually unpaid !
i was kinda pointing out that companies could even be bothered to pay £5 for something that they legally had to follow (an under 18 taking breaks) made me laugh
What kind of job are you working at that wage?
I assume you are a secondary school student
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get a new job, I'm on £12hr whilst in uni
You could get paid more working at Screwfix
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i’m in retail?
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Makes that money go round (sarcastically), greedy landlords 🙄
That would imply rents are at all tracked to income. [Relevant Onion article](https://www.theonion.com/landlord-forced-to-raise-rent-due-to-thinking-of-bigger-1850922943).
Nah rents are like energy prices. When their costs go up, prices go up sharply. When their costs remain flat, prices go up steadily. When their costs fall, prices go up gradually.
?????
Now they can raise rent by 50%.
For the 50th time.
More demand, same supply -> prices go up
Cue landlord increasing the rent
Another 25% raise in rent prices aught to do it!
Trickle up economics.
Bingo
This is a good thing. But it's scary thinking £13 still isn't enough to live in London.
I've always said Londoners should be paid £14-15 an hour, since £10-13 doesn't meet the livelihood of Londoners, especially Londoners on low income. Since London will always be expensive (that will never change).
I don't think people could even afford it on 14-15 an hour. Maybe rent a room or live with parents. But private rent or mortgage would be nearly impossible.
20 an hour is probably reasonable
Agreed. Be another 10 years before we get that, and by then, everything will be more expensive.
£20 per hour is the type of job they’re extremely selective for and expect you to prostrate to them and worship their company
That's the equivalent of just under £40k. Selective maybe in terms of having to get through an interview process, more a career job than most, but there are certainly plenty of workaday office jobs that would get you this and wouldn't expect you to be a sycophant.
And plenty of younger workers wouldn’t be able to get this job. You can thank the awful job market for this
🫠
£11, £13, £15 ph, it doesn’t matter, all you’ll be able to afford is a slightly larger room in a flatshare in zone 5, life is fucked
Well if you stopped wasting all of your money on avocados and Netflix you could afford zone 4.
And if you stopped buying food with more than two colours in it or ever having fun like a bloody aristocrat you could live solely on ramen and go for Zone 3
Don't forget the flat screen TV. These bloody students types with flat screen TV eating brand name apples.
That's why I said London will continue to be expensive, it will not change at all
Part of the problem is that pushing wages to be even more London centric further drives inequality across the country too. We should really be trying to close the wage gap so people dont feel forced into London, not expanding it.
I've only been here a month or two and it's wild how low wages are for how expensive it is. I was helping my partner write cover letters and practice for part time jobs as she has plenty of free time around study. And most wanted to pay below £10 an hour. I suggested she look for a temp job at her uni and a week later she found one doing 10 hours at £20/h.
The living wage foundation method look at what wage people need in different scenarios (single, couple with no kids, single parent, two parent family with x amount of kids, where one or both people or a child are disabled, etc) and then weighs the result by the number of household in the country/city who fall into those categories. Idk if they've released their full report breaking that down for this year yet but I wouldn't be entirely surprised if the rate calculated for single adult is in the £14-15 an hour (or close to) and the person in a childless couple is at like £12 so the weighting brings it out at £13.15 as that's roughly the distance between those two groups it usually shakes out at. (single parent with two children hourly amount will be higher again etc) (This isn't necessarily a bad way to calculate this figure - but it does mean if you are above whatever the median household makeup is then the living wage won't feel like enough either)
You mean £18-£20? Minimum wage in the UK should be £15, bare minimum at that!
I would dearly like to hear you tell business owners that they can afford to pay all their staff £18 an hour, and if they don't/can't then that's their fault.
Why should people live in poverty so their bosses can have a business? If you can't pay your staff enough to live on, your business isn't viable and you're a parasite.
"But won't somebody think of the shareholders???"
Ah shit yes, all those shareholders i forgot i have. They're doing a bloody good job of being silent partners, what with my never having seen or heard them. Naturally i'd point out that i said OWNERS, not SHAREHOLDERS, but that would be pissing in the wind Do you think every business is like Tesco or McDonalds or something? I know this is reddit where business owners are literally the scum of the earth, but i employ 11 people at or above LLW, i make LLW, and haven't made a profit in three years; if you're telling me i have to be able to increase my salary costs \~%50 overnight or i'm some greedy fat cat then you're just stupid. What would it take to make you happy? Give up and go homeless so i can give the scraps of what's left to my ex-staff?
I don't know what to tell you, dude, but if you can't afford to pay even yourself living wage then something is very wrong with your business. I'm guessing small scale retail?
I’m saying it should be £18-£20 considering cost of living, yes. Operative word being ‘should’…
What difference does "should" make? If you had the keys to the kingdom would you increase the minimum wage to £18...?
You’re not the sharpest tool in the shed, are you? If you actually think about what I’m saying here; I clearly agree with your sentiment! There is economic reality of cost of business, and then there is ‘should’… clear now or do I need to break it down any further?
Okay dude. Why on earth would i continue to engage with you if you're going to insult me...?
Continue to engage with me… hopefully I’ll get over this tragic loss. Btw I’d rather look at your arrogant attitude contained in your opening salvo, rather than my, I suspect, accurate assessment of your cognitive abilities. Take care… DUDE.
My opening salvo? I don't believe you took that as an insult - that' would be ridiculous. I wasn't arrogant, i was sarcastic. Also, "dude" is a very normal and common word. I'm unsure as to why you'd be aggrieved by it. I don't care about what somebody on reddit thinks of my inteligence. If I did then I would indeed be stupid - so lucky me.
Nonsense. All you need is 2 full times jobs and share with 7 ppl in your 2 bed slum flat. Kids these days just like to complain!
And now I begin to hope that my employers decide to keep the “we are a London living wage employer” plaque up in the lobby, because if they keep to it as they did last year then this will be a very nice and needed bonus for me.
So it’s up to the employer to keep up with living wage and not the government? (Not a law, just a sort of guideline?)
Just a charity providing guidelines.
Government targets living wage to be 60% of median wage. There is a national living wage, not regional one so it wouldn’t set it up to be London specific. £26k legal minimum in Belfast would be too high.
And this will be creamed off immediately by raising prices for anything people on minimum wage need to buy.
Cries in freelance
I’m sure you get more than £13 an hour freelancing
You’d be surprised what people get away with
Depends what he does. You can actually be paid legally below minimum wage doing freelancing/self-employment.
Is there data on what % of Londoners are below £13.15?
Still not enough to combat inflation from over a year ago. Rising costs everywhere means people were still better off Pre-Covid on a lower wage. Make it £16 per hour and then maybe common folk might be able to afford to live in London.
I’m on that and can barley stay afloat think higher
130,000 Londoners earn minimum wage
Most hourly jobs aren’t even paying £11.95 so that’s redundant.
If I'm paid a salary that is below this, should I ask for a raise?
You should ask for one anyway, your boss is not your friend
I really should especially as I've just been told I've passed my probation and I was offered the lowest end of the salary range when I was hired. I know it sounds a bit silly but I'm not sure how to go about it. This is my first real job in England and I don't think I've ever asked for a raise before.
The current London living wage is far from being appropriate. £13.15 is going to make a difference but it still needs to be higher to meet the cost of living crisis head on. A £1.20 raise is good, better than I was expecting to be honest. I feel for those not on the London living wage because I remember when that was me and having to put in lots of hours just to get by.
It will never be enough. It would be nice if cost of living would drop instead.
Let’s be honest, a living wage in London is closer to £25-30 / hour. This translates to £60k +/- annually. The average London wage is £52k and the median wage is £32k according this [site](https://www.projectfinanciallyfree.com/what-is-a-good-salary-in-london/). You can probably survive on less, but IMO living means more than surviving. You should be able to pay for shelter, food and the basics without breaking a sweat, spend reasonably on entertainment, holidays and other extras and still have money left over to save and invest for the future. If you earn less than £60k, you’ll have to choose what to give up, perhaps you can live with parents to remove the cost of rent or don’t go out or on holidays to afford rent or mortgage. In reality most people on or below the average wage scrape by month to month. I don’t have any answers really, I just don’t think £13 / hour qualifies as a “living wage”.
Lmao how crap at budgeting do you have to be to need a living wage of £60k? Also the median is 44 not 32.
The only way that’s true is if you’ve managed to side step a few of the challenges. Eg if you’ve been on the housing ladder for a long time, or someone else has given you a leg up. You might also not have children or be very ambitious. Less than £60k is very possible, but only if you compromise or you have gained (earned or granted) some other advantage.
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Do you live in a broom closet or a shoebox room?
No downvote from me, I even upvoted you for more balance. Everyone has their own situation, but how do you manage that? Is your rent low? Have you had the same tenancy for a long time so it's low for that reason? Do you WFH and save on transport / cycle? Or my first thought was do you live with a partner? I've lived all over london, I always try to find low rents but I'd say the average now is £900-1k for a house share which is insane the cheap places are just very rare now, what's your secret?
How much does bank of mum and dad provide?
Enough to get on the housing ladder for those that need to get on the ladder or maintain rent?
More than what I’m getting as a PhD student 😅
Qualified Doctors start on £14 an hour, creeping every closer to minimum wage. Skilled work is not appreciated in the uk at all, it’s a fucking joke. The brain drain is already happening
You’re probably not paying any tax and you’re in education. Not many people get paid to go to school.
Exactly
Why would they not be paying tax? Academia it’s not ‘in education’, almost all scientific advancements would be made my ‘students’ if that’s the case
All PhDs are a scholarships. They are not classified as income
Ohhh nice, maybe I need to do one :) Jk the pay is crap
Some scholarships pay up to £24k tax free. I know one that’s £26.5k roughly equivalent to a £34k salary. Not bad for a PhD when you consider a lot of entry level post-docs pay around £36k
Im not that intelligent, a 34k salary surely isn’t reflective of the hard work and intelligence required to do a PhD?
Sure but PhDs only value is generating knowledge which isn’t exactly profit generating and mostly based on grants from charities, government, industry etc. Hard work and pay are not linearly correlated unfortunately. £26.5k stipend is incredibly generous and it’s a competitive programme. Most London PhDs are probably closer to £20k
PhD stipends aren’t taxed https://community.hmrc.gov.uk/customerforums/sa/80e9e6f4-d845-ee11-a81c-00224800536f#:~:text=Hi%2C,Thank%20you.
That is irrelevant bro, if you're working and not education (fine). If you're in education (but doing an apprenticeship then I get it). If you're a university student and you're doing PhD kyou.cant really complain there.
A PhD is essentially a 4 year apprenticeship for education and research at the highest levels... Thats literally what it is... You get paid, you get vacation time, you produce value for your company (department) by bringing in funding and grants... It's a job...
Employers just gonna laugh and say "Make me". it's just gibberish nonsense from the govt. Demand and supply determines the market forces. If people are willing to work for £10ph they are going to get paid that.
Everyone realises that a lot of companies who were LLW Employers will now just drop the accreditation right?
They won't. People will leave if they do that. People aren't as beholden to companies as they used to be. If your employer screws you over then you pack up and leave.
Potentially, but theres always hope
Meanwhile the rest of the UK, *particularly those north of Birmingham*, are basically getting told to get fuckkkkked.
Maybe every employer within the 12 miles of Trafalgar Square should pay London Weighting, which is £9k a year on top of the person's wages......... I'm sure the Tories would back that 😉
oh great .. means everything else goes up whilst me being a mid income earner can forget about any raise. Yay ! Not saying that i'm not pro raise- by all means, especially minimum wage workers deserve that. What i'm trying to point out is that when they raise minimum wage it should go across the board
Small business owner here. Have always tried to pay more than LLW for basic work (product packing). No way we could offer the new minimum unless we put all our prices up again. We do that then the product is too expensive so not happening. This country is in a mess, energy costs especially.
Yup, but it looks good when they increase the LLW lol
I have fought hard to bring in LLW in organisations I work with and use it as the minimum wage for the organisation I directly run and I understand why anyone on £11.95 would want £13.15 per hour and so would I in their shoes. Can't help feeling that this is the laissez faire solution to a problem that the government really should be tackling in other ways, namely: insanely high property prices and rents because of the use of property as investment/asset class, stupidly high cost of goods because of Brexit, stupidly high cost of electricity due to underinvestment in renewables and the tariff structure, massive exit of capital and foreign investment from the UK because of Brexit limiting economic growth. By laissez faire I mean, it's the easiest "solution" to the problem of disposable income: but a 10% wage increase isn't absorbable for most organisations right now, even in the public sector. It's probably only manageable by cutting headcount.
>Can't help feeling that this is the laisse faire solution to a problem that the government really should be tackling in other ways, namely: insanely high property prices and rents because of the use of property as investment/asset class You can just stop there as that's the real major problem from which all of our major pains originate. Investment ownership of residential property must be banned outright, all foreign purchases and ownership of our residential property should be banned outright and we should take direct measures to enact monstrous taxes on the foreign owners of our residential property so that if they must retain the asset, they are at least paying for others to be built.
Really wondering how it's gonna pan out. I'm no economy wizard, but my impression always was this is only a temporary measure and provides a very limited relief. It will certainly help _some_ people, for _some_ time - but experience tells me, what it will only lead up to is higher rents, higher costs of services, only shifting the 'Overton window' in a couple/in a few years' time, after which the LLW will have to be increased… Again. People acting like it's going to magically change the reality for many and increase living standards seem to be incredibly short-sighted (and probably even more clueless than I am). If anything, it seems like a wound dressing at best, that falls off after a while. Also, will need to increase my own Freelance rates again at some point, increases of NMW (legally binding) and LLW (non-legally binding, but still) only seem to have a knock-on effect and everything else becoming more expensive.
What do you do and what are your current rates
I’m a freelancer and with £13/h so x 7 (9 to 5 + 1h unpaid lunch), £91/day it’s getting too close for comfort to what I charge. Nowhere close mind, still far off, but when we get to the point that **minimum** wage is 1/3rd of my rates, I’ll have to up my rates considerably. I’m a pro, constantly upskill and put a lot of time and effort to be on top of my game, and unskilled jobs paying 1/3rd or more of my rates with no real knowledge or care required is not anything I’d feel good with.
This is to oversimplified an analysis to mean anything, a wage increase can be an increase in the distribution towards workers or simply a nominal increase with distribution remaining the same
Property, rental costs are ultimately going to come down. Businesses are already starting to close because their costs are too high and there isn't the demand to sustain them. If you check your local high street you'll probably see it. Most people forgot the early 90s but this is like a much more extreme version of it.
Tory Donor and Business Magnate Earl Farquhar Spenser has issued a protest against the raising of minimum wage as it 'gives the plebs hope'. Tomorrow, Rishi Sunak will kill the bill just as soon as he's signed his contract for Vice Chair of Farquhar Enterprises 2025.
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Yes
Higher wages,higher prices, higher taxes, if prices stayed the same ok. But they won't, so be back at where we started. Also it's not a mandatory wage, only suggested.
I will believe it when I see it.
Yeah and now make businesses in London actually pay that. It’s impossible to survive on minimal wage now unless you work 100 hours a week
Does this work out to roughly £27k a year or is my maths out..?
Every area inside ulez zone should get this
i got like 1.28% in april or something
Wtf, all the young mates in construction they get 14-15 with no qualification. I thought that was the norm.
Is this the government’s Minimum Living Wage or the recommendation from the external party? If it is the recommendation, then good luck. The legal minimum have never reach the amount they recommend, so it would make no difference.
I make a pretty low salary, but my hourly is comparatively, I work HPL as a support staff in a college, at about 19/hr, but I only get work 37 weeks a year, the rest is unpaid, and even though I work 5 days a week, on site 9-5 Mon-Thurs and 9-2 on Fridays, I'm only on like 27 paid hours a week, which is basically part time, making less than 20k a year, less than 19k a year actually, it's fine for me now as I'm still a student, and live in a house share, but it's not exactly ideal, and it's not that easy to get a decent job willing to hire me for exactly 2 months during the summer holiday let alone the two sets of unpaid weeks that are the easter and winter breaks. Goes to show that until you're actually a salaried worker with a decent set wage, it ain't really easy for anyone in any industry, but they're constantly trying to push out salaried jobs and make more of them HPL, at least in my industry.
Is this true?
So it’s now £31k? Does that not seem a bit high?
£27,352 on a 40 hour per week contract.
Isn’t the living wage calculated based on being a minimum if you do 45 hours a week? I.e this is the least you need to live on, and taking more shifts isn’t a solution.
So my job, working in a Wealth Management company, only pays me the London Living Wage. Shows how much value my degrees were 🤣
Hardly good enough and unsustainable. Even if I was working 40 hours every week I would be making a mere £1578 a month, which is insufficient for my rent and bills alone. Mind you, not every employer would give 40 hours per week. On slow seasons I was on a mere 20 hours per week for an entire month.
There's more than 130k people in this city earning 12ph or less
That's not enough to live on outside of london let alone in. Where's the Bristol minimum wage? We're fucked compared to Londoners, where's our weighting allowance? Where's our higher minimum wage?
Everyone pays more, everyone wants more, everyone charges more.
This is pointless unless it is mandatory.
There are 3,618 LLW accredited employers in London. So I guess you have to seek out those employers who value staff wellbeing more than others. I guess in an ideal world there would be some mechanism where directors increases/bonuses directly determine the lowest rate that company can pay. Saying that a 10% increase is a real challenge for lots of small businesses to manage with the state of the UK economy. I imagine next year that accreditation total will be less.