https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68678814
In other words, who else lives outside the typical STWer bubble?
In other news, the number of people who are on the minimum wage has increased dramatically today.
Yeah, we've two sons happy about it. One is frustrated as Tesco are only introducing it at payday - so he's got 3 weeks at olde lower rate
That can’t be right? Surely they must be back dating it to today?
Sure he not getting confused with being paid in arrears?
In other words, who else lives outside the typical STWer bubble?
For folk on the Minimum/Living Wage, what other benefits/credits are also typically claimed/paid etc too to enable you to live?
I'm not thinking about folk still living with their folks, or who've a better earning partner to cover other costs - just folk or couples living on the Minimum/Living Wage.
How do you pay rent, mortgage, utilities, council tax, food, transport, child-costs etc - as I'm someone (along with my OH) that are (not bragging) earning more than the Minimum/Living Wage is now, back in the 80's; consequently I've no idea how folk manage, especially seeing the prices of basic 'living' costs.
My firm have already announced the pay rises for this year, outside of Minimum/Living Wage we'll be getting 5% in May.
A lot of very peeved people in supervisor positions that are not getting a rise and will be supervising the work of others for about 10p an hour. Clearly not the fault if those getting today's improved minimum wage or even to be fair the government. But it still must suck.
"A lot of very peeved people in supervisor positions that are not getting a rise and will be supervising the work of others for about 10p an hour. Clearly not the fault if those getting today’s improved minimum wage or even to be fair the government. But it still must suck."
Yeah, I'll be in that bracket as well as 2 of the team leaders under me, who were also overlooked last year. The breakdown on the BBC this morning of the bills that are going up is somewhat depressing also. To add, we won't find out until we get our payslip at the end of the month, which is pretty frustrating. The primary option will be to vote with our feet.
Yep that'll be me 😁.....
Forced to put up the 10hrs a week I pay myself so could be an extra £10 a week, but I'll probably reduce my paid working hours to 9 (from 10) and keep my take home pay roughly the same. I do the other 50hrs a week in my shop for free....
We need to bring down the cost of living not shove up wages. As mentioned above those just above the thresholds are getting really shafted.
But it's a lot easier for governments to push the wage increases onto employers than sort the cost of housing and energy.
"A lot of very peeved people in supervisor positions that are not getting a rise and will be supervising the work of others for about 10p an hour. "
My daugher was in that position a year or two ago working in a hotel. Asked for a raise. Refused. Resigned with immediate effect (which I disagreed with). Got a better paid job at a better hotel within a couple of weeks.
I have to say I was proud of her for not letting the management disrespect her like that even if I thought she should have got another job before quitting.
Energy is dropping and as more offshore wind comes online, agile pricing will drive the price lower even with the locked contracts on energy pricing. As energy prices decrease, food might also, but sadly I doubt it. Anything which was packaged and available year round is now smaller/more expensive and it will never go back, so a wage increase IS required.
A surprising number of civil servants are getting a pay rise today.
As one of our admin commented, it took them 30 years in the civil service for the government to bring their salary down to the minimum wage.
I'd be on the streets!
My wife is a housekeeper at a very posh Cotswold hotel. She was getting just less than the new rate last year and has had 8.5% this year to keep her ahead of NMW. She also does pretty well out of tips. It would seem that not everyone had the same rise as it has been emphasised that discussing pay is not acceptable and that's never done for the benefit of the employees...
I had 12.5% in January when I took on a new role so I don't think I'll be getting one but I have another decent rise next January as long as I complete my training goals.
State pension going up 8.5% also
But it’s a lot easier for governments to push the wage increases onto employers than sort the cost of housing and energy.
Very much this. They're absolving themselves of responsibility for all their numerous failures, not reigning in the profiterring of their mates and just leaving it to employers to sort out instead. Plus, if other peoples wages aren't going up proportionately, which they're not, then the minimum wage (I refuse to call it the 'living wage' because it isn't) just becomes 'the standard wage' as more people are pulled into it year-on-year. Give it long enough and thats what everyones on.
I left a job ( social services) in 2010 and my salary was roughly £22,000 a year. I now do the same job, with the same people but for a charity that now runs the service and get… roughly £22,000 a year!!! 14 years on and no increase in pay, luckily all prices, houses, food etc etc have stayed the same 😉😩. We at the bottom are shafted big time.
There's a few at our company who are on minimum wage, mostly young people. Rather than give them more money per year, and then do the same for the larger number of people who are paid a little over minimum wage, and a little more for the next tier up to avoid upsetting anyone (we have a staff retention problem as it is) they have dropped our working hours from 40 to 37.5, this includes the loss of 1x 15 minute break per day and kept annual pay the same, giving the effect of a per hour wage increase. It's a win in many ways - 40 hours is at the upper end for a standard working week, we have staff who will still get the same amount done per week and the annual wage bill will be roughly the same. On top of that most of us will get to go home half an hour earlier. Downside of course, is that anyone who was struggling to pay their bills isn't going to be any better off.
Fuel prices might be going down but are still a lot higher than 3 years ago, im still paying double.
I know we've skewed pay increases so they are tapered, people on higher salaries are getting a lot less percentage wise. I doubt there will be much sympathy for higher earners 'cos they can afford it' but my salary is now worth 10% less in real terms than when I started four years ago despite now being experienced in my role and have my pdepartments performing the best they ever have (including staff turnover which was running at around 30% when I started, nearly zero now, probably due to the fact I dont treat them like garbage and have managed to increase their base pay from 16k to 24k).
A lot of very peeved people in supervisor positions that are not getting a rise and will be supervising the work of others for about 10p an hour
Our bottom two admin grades are effectively the same pay now, and the managers who manage them are looking over their shoulders as the NMW catches them up. - truly is little benefit going for promotion given the little extra financial reward.
I left a job ( social services) in 2010 and my salary was roughly £22,000 a year. I now do the same job, with the same people but for a charity that now runs the service and get… roughly £22,000 a year!!!
The game I'm in is exactly the same. Salaries and hourly freelance rates have stagnated for well over a decade now and are pretty much what they were in 2010 (unless you're really lucky). I've just got a new job and the salary is the same as I was on for the same position in 2008. I doubt we're alone in this and I'm sure there's plenty worse off than me.
But as you noted: luckily all prices, houses, food etc etc have stayed the same
As far as salaries and quality of living is concerned, what happened to people in industrial jobs in the 1980's has just moved on to other sectors of the economy. Hollow it out, casualise it all to make it all more precarious then the drip-drip-drip of constantly eroded wages and working conditions. The government set the tone in 2010 with year-on-year public sector pay freezes and the private sector just followed their lead.
The increase in the minimum wage is just making more jobs into minimum wage jobs, given the non-increase in anyone elses salaries
An aside - what's the deal with the NMW and those that can expect tips/gratuities in their role?
Mrs C has recently taken a big pay cut and decided to work for a charity. There is a certain amount of her/our decision in her taking the job so it's not completely fair to compare it all to cash, but she to come up with a national and regional strategy and present it to the charity's directors, organise and hold meetings with third parties; stand up and present to everything from groups of kids in schools, CAB workers at their regional meetings, MSPs and general members of the public. She has to weekly drive up to 4 hrs each way for meetings and happy to stay overnight. She's now on less than a pound an hour more than NMW. I suspect there might be easier ways to earn it!
To answer my own question....tips and gratuities can't form part of your NMW income so it's NMW basic plus tips. When you consider the number of sectors where workers are now part of the NMW group, it actually makes working in Pizza Hut almost a good prospect. Apart from having to spend 40 hours a week standing in Pizza Hut.
The game I’m in is exactly the same. Salaries and hourly freelance rates have stagnated for well over a decade now and are pretty much what they were in 2010 (unless you’re really lucky). I’ve just got a new job and the salary is the same as I was on for the same position in 2008. I doubt we’re alone in this and I’m sure there’s plenty worse off than me.
Two decades really (if you ignore those on the Minimum Wage).
I work with folk earning the same that I was earning in equivalent perm roles +20 years ago.
Contracting-wise, looks like day-rates also aren't any different as to what I was paying for +20 years ago, and with the IR35 clamp down, far less valuable as the tax-rates are higher and ability to cover expense costs lower AKA less net pay.
She’s now on less than a pound an hour more than NMW. I suspect there might be easier ways to earn it!
I suspect that this will have massive knock on effects in various sectors that already struggle for staff. I'm thinking of jobs like care-work etc where its a lot of hard work and responsibility but why bother if you can go and earn the same sat on a checkout in Tesco, with none of the responsibility
Uk pension and most of an Isle of Man pension being paid to me , so 8.5 % rise will be welcome and will slightly ease the bitter taste of my private pension losing 30% of it's value in a year last year , just as I was due to get my hands on it .
Yep should be getting it from today but work for a large holiday camp company and we won't get it until our next pay cycle has finished ,so got another 2 weeks before we start the new rate ,they have done it every time the wage goes up so it saves them a fortune !!
"I suspect that this will have massive knock on effects in various sectors that already struggle for staff."
It's already happening in the HGV sector. Lots of companies still expecting Class 2 drivers (rigids) to work for £12/hr. There's not a massive shortage of drivers now but there are enough vacancies that everyone who can is moving to the higher paid jobs, £15/hr is the expectation, leaving the crap jobs empty. The days early in the pandemic of high wages due to massive shortages has gone and the companies haven't heeded the lessons. Why drive a big truck with the extra responsibility, DVSA checks and tacho rules to worry about when you can drive a van for the same money or work in a warehouse for more?
I worked for a company a few weeks ago via agency and was on £15/hr, they were paying £32/hr to the agency. Offered me a permanent job which sounded good until you broke it down to per hour, £12.35. That's nowhere near enough to deal with dirty and soiled laundry from hotels etc and start at 3am.
HMRC are responsible for checking businesses comply with NMW.
Rumour has it they would not look at reports into their own staff/pay, though I suspect that any outliers have now been addressed. (I hope)
I feel lucky getting 6.3%
Re..the comment about hollowing out the next industry in the crosshairs, it will mean that many jobs are then done in lower cost countries (China, Indonesia, India, etc). And the trade deficit increases further.
The tossbandits that I left 2 years ago built up engineering design capacity in India to cut UK based costs (for big projects often paid for by the UK Gov = tax payers). So all its doing is funnelling more money out of the country whilst not supporting the development of the next generation of UK engineers.
If they paid the same wages as in the UK I'd not have as big an issue with it. But they don't. They know they can pay a small fraction of what a UK based engineer would be paid.
All fuelling the race to the bottom.
State pension going up 8.5% also
It’ll certainly come in useful.
Hollow it out, casualise it all to make it all more precarious then the drip-drip-drip of constantly eroded wages and working conditions. The government set the tone in 2010 with year-on-year public sector pay freezes and the private sector just followed their lead.
The increase in the minimum wage is just making more jobs into minimum wage jobs, given the non-increase in anyone elses salaries
Yup. Been going on for years cheered on by hateful toady small businessmen/working class turncoats who would drag us all back to the middle ages. Corporate businesses who screw over labour forces at every opportunity to bolster executive pay.
Most resent paying minimum wage and would have it abolished never mind paying more. Then there's the self-interested, throw everyone else under a bus, triple lock pensioners. When the going got rough, got out early and fought nothing. They never miss voting day and a chance to put the world to rights, scroungers, lazy young people and immigrants, down the non-working men's club!
triple lock pensioners
I did wonder if part of the re-balancing of UK's finances post covid, where the young definitely sacrificed the most to protect the older members of society, if the triple lock might go. But as you say, oldies reliably turn up to vote so it was never going to happen.
We don’t manufacture enough and our economy relies on services which are less valuable and generate no real wealth. Therefore wages in service industries have stagnated, or declined in real terms. Real wealth comes from agricultural, natural resource or industrial output of which we have very little and are net importers of most things. Sounds like just the right time to leave one of the world’s largest free trade zones wouldn’t you agree?!
The things that made this country successful and powerful are either unpalatable or unrepeatable in the modern world. Slavery and empire building aren’t really flavour of the month and we have lost manufacturing and industry to other countries. Ironically many of them used to be part of our Empire and they took what we taught them and raised it up a notch
Spare a thought for our children’s generation who now also have to compete with AI for work! And thanks to the Boomers, the planet is buggered, there’s a huge end of life burden to be paid for by the working population and Brexit happened. As somebody in the last phase of their working life, whilst I am not ending on a high, I would rather be at this end of my career than the start. I really feel for Solarider Jnr and his classmates.
It is all too easy to blame the Tories, but broadly it is a global phenomenon. Macro economic trends mean that our children are sadly less likely to enjoy the life that we did, and ours in turn feels a bit worse than our parents’.
It is a truly depressing outlook!
