UK Salaries, UK economic situation

Is it just me or does everyone in the UK earn the same salary? - more or less.

When you see US posters they talk about earning $100k out of college. Minimum wage as less than $20,000. $90k, $150k, and so on.

Whereas UK salaries are all more or less the same - around £30k.

Sure, you get people earning various salaries between £20k and £40k - but rarely much more or less.

Obviously I'm talking about salaries - I'm not talking about business owners, etc. who can earn anything from £0 to £infinite per year.

As an example, I know a bunch of people working in big 4 (between 3 and 5 years experince). They all make around £32k. It's an above average salary, sure. But it's in the same BALL PARK as pretty much every other job going.

I've had 3 completely different jobs since leaving university - programmer, marketing exec, and teacher. The salaries were £25k, £26k and £23k - i.e. exactly the same more or less.

It feels like there is no opportunity to move up or down - especially in the South. I'd never be able to afford a house on those kinds of salaries. Most houses are way more than 10x gross salary and rising much faster than wages.

Should I just move to the US and try to make it work over there?

Other urls found in this thread:

itjobswatch.co.uk/contracts/uk/dynamics crm consultant.do
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

What's it like working as a marketing exec? How did you get it?

I did that job for about a year at a marketing agency. I quit because the owner was a bellend and autistic about bureaucracy - following procedures and recording time were far more important than anything else.

That aside, it was a brilliant job - for the sole reason of what I learned. I got paid to learn SEO, PPC, web design, conversion optimisation, all that stuff. Now I use those skills to build my own e-commerce stores. There are so many businesses out there selling the same stuff. The only thing that differentiates them is their marketing.

Marketing+accounting IS business, in my view.

As for how I got the job, same as any other: I applied to an ad. I have a decent arts degree (fuck off STEM autists) and was able to bullshit about how these skills would transfer to marketing.

My salary capped out at 27k, starting was 20k. Offshore engineering.

My immediate boss (the CEO) paid himself 500k/yr plus dividends.

I think the only way to make it in the UK is to start a business of your own, the labor pool is too cucked here to make employers bother with being competetive.

>yuropoors

It definitely feels that way. The only rich people I know in the UK are 40 years old+ who are rich solely through luck i.e. they were born in time to benefit from house price inflation.

Don't want to derail my own thread but here are some stats from my most popular site. I should say I don't consider myself a marketing expert despite having done it as a job. I'm happy with the traffic but hardly any of it converts to sales. Does anyone have any general conversion rate optimisation tips?

Yeah I also found that strange. I'd like to know what the people who work for Transport for London standing next to the ticket machines making sure someone is there if there is a problem make. Or the people whose job it is to sit at the entrance of a building. Or the people who stand at the entrance of supermarkets.

All those jobs practically don't exist in my country (Austria). My guess is that these people also earn 20k+ pounds, and therefore people working a job that requires more education and dedication make less.

It's just a larger country with more variation. The situation is similar in the US when it comes to wages, people who were making ~100K USD in 2006 are still making that same amount today, there's just more job opportunities for niche businesses with high profit margins in the US so you have students leaving colleges to directly head into new businesses with demand for good people, it's all about the job market and finding an industry with a high profit margin that can actually afford to pay you adequately if you make them a shitload of money.

Yeah, those people will all make about £20k. I can't remember what min wage is here but a 40hr work week ends up around £18k at min wage.

> and therefore people working a job that requires more education and dedication make less
You mean make less per hour, right?

Going back to the big 4 people as an example, most of them work about 60hrs a week. With a salary of 32k it works out about the same PER HOUR as the guy working the ticket machines or at the entrance to a building or whatever for 40hrs a week - especially since they pay less tax.

I agree. engineering grads get paid even worse after being dragged through a pile of shit just to get the degree and get paid a wage less than a accountant.

Just start you own business just sell bullshit to gullible people. I have made about £3k in a month selling fake football shoes to retards with them being clearly listed as fake lol

You're comparing to the top 5% of the US. In other words, California.

Signed, energy trader who left EDF and their 38k for PG&Es trading floor which pays $140k plus commission.

Depends, I work in IT currently and we deal with cloud computing. Contractors (self-employed people) and the consultants (they get a salary but their company charges them out at a day rate to the client) get anywhere from £50-£120k per year. I'm a junior so I don't see these figures but everyone has weekends off and works around 36-37 hours per week. Then there's a level up, IT Strategy, and those guys see £150k+ per year for essentially advising how to use IT as a business driver rather than a business enabler.

My advice: forget all this meme shit, learn SQL/Python/Excel. Learn how to test systems, design process maps, manage a project etc. Then get into IT - it's not boring and can lead to some cool opportunities (IT/Tech strategy is super cool and interesting when you get to work on I.o.T projects, you might even stumble upon an idea which will be the next Facebook/Uber/AirBnB).

What world are you living in? If the UK had the capacity to pay any IT guys 100k+ nobody would live in the US.

Not even going to bother arguing with your opinion, IT Consulting is big money if you do it self-employed. itjobswatch.co.uk/contracts/uk/dynamics crm consultant.do

Never thought about it but its actually fucking true.
£30k seems the average for anything above a minimum wage job

Everything is big money you do it self employed.
But the point of this thread is to discuss why for decent jobs, there seems to be a cap of around £40k with a £30k average.

The UK has never been much of an entrepreneurial nation post-Empire. Thats why you guys keep getting cucked by the rich because they are the only competition for you lot.

It is a job? Once you're in the industry and you have contacts and you're decent at the job you'll have headhunters constantly coming after you. Plus there's always people who end up getting scouted by big consultancies to work as employees w/all benefits. I think it's quite obvious why most jobs are capped to around £40k; you can't have everyone earning over a certain amount otherwise the higher salaries would be worthless.

this is because brit-bongs are cucks.

americans are the free and the brave. aka we dont let the govt tell us what we can make.

in the uk they love big govt. thats why they love the queen.

the founding fathers of USA realized this and said, we like freedom too much. we're making our own badass wealthy country lol.

every notice how every famous british political commentator in the usa is democrat/liberal? Pierce morgan for example.

ya'll just dont mind big govt/high taxes.

that KILLS wages bro.

>Finished network security degree
>came back to my hometown, got a job starting £26k in IT support
>been living with my parents while saving, it's been a year and a half now
>now on £28k, but completely miserable and despise my job. Don't even really want to do IT anymore

:(

this.

dubs even confirms it.

>in the uk they love big govt.

Yup. In a way, the brits are not just used to living under a form of socialism, they are "comfortable" under socialism.

Anyone who wants more out of their careers or are smart enough move to the US to work.

That's the way it is with the euros. The lazy and low achieving stay behind. The ambitious overachievers all emigrate to compete in the US.

I would move to the US but I can't get on with Mexican food.

Mexican food or making 80k more a year than you.... hmm.. I'll think I'll stay.

same here. I hate how they force us to eat Mexican food all the time and play American football. And don't even get me started on the cattle roping classes you have to take. Mandatory gun ownership and gang membership.

I was going to make a thread on this but I am a non-Veeky Forumsfag

Is it about time for another economic downturn?

There are junior programmer positions up north where I live that pay about £15k.

I have a CompSci degree but I'm earning £22k as a team leader in a warehouse and with the ridiculous rent I simply cant afford to work for any less than I'm making now.

I'm stuck in a shitty dead end job and I hate my life.

I had no idea britbongs made so little money. I'm like 3 yrs out of college. My friends my age make anywhere between $30k for shit jobs to $130k for well paid computer guys.

I'm 27 year old, earning £45k as a creative director at an ad agency.

I'm desperate to start my own agency but it's going to take years to save up enough seed money. If i don't do it them I'm destined to spend the next 40 years crawling up the agency ladder, getting insignificant pay rises and generally driving myself into depression.

No one knows

Some things:
> stagnant wages for a decade or so
> automation
> everyone goes to university so a degree is worthless
> ridiculous rent so you can't save money
> even more ridiculous prices to buy
> high rate tax of 40% so no basically no point earning more than £43k - not that you're likely to anyway
> ridiculous national debt - we can't even get the budget DEFICIT down - let alone the national debt

House prices is the big one for me. If I could at least get a place of my own I'd feel like I had some stake in society. Instead, work just felt like I was doing it to pay rent and taxes with no hope for anything better. I saved and saved and saved but it's not enough. Absolute best case scenario for mortgage lending is 4x gross salary. But with the standard salary I described (i.e. ~£30k) it's still only £120k. Save up a 20k deposit on top and you still won't get more than a 1 bed flat for that.

>House prices is the big one for me. If I could at least get a place of my own I'd feel like I had some stake in society.


Couldn't agree more. Just having my own place would mean so much to me. Having to pay crazy rent and save for a house deposit at the same time is killing me.

I have a friend who got married and they pay £350 a month mortgage which is £200 a month less than I pay in rent. I cant get a mortgage because I'm a single guy with a history of depression so I'm trying to save up my money and buy something shit outright. Ive managed to save only 40k over the last 10 years and most of that I was living with my parents rent free.

My father was making £60k a year in local government by the time he was 35 and finished his career at £110k but spent less time in that region as by that point he'd paid off his debts, was 62 and me and all my siblings had gone to university.

Big salaries are possible here

retarded house prices nowadays are because of globalism. wealthy chinese in particular love dumping money into US real estates.

houses in the middle of nowhere are still cheap since chinks love living like rats and you can't do that when your nearest neighbor is half a mile away.

Chinese account for .2% of the global wealth in houses.

It's a meme confined to a few cities in the world.

>It's a meme confined to a few cities in the world.
this.

the real problem is jewish merchants.

In 8.5 years, the house price will have increased again.

That's weird, OP. I work in London, joined as Project Engineer, making £25k. Two years later (now), I'm on £30k and waiting for a 6k raise that should have already been approved.

Just this Thursday I went to another interview and told them I was on £36k + benefits (I work for a FTSE 100 company) and told them that would need a some incentive to leave.

My gf is a nurse and makes around £35k. Now moving to another job where she'll make 40k. We have this friend who works for a bank as a "trader", and he alegedely makes 80k.

I've always thought that 35k was on the low end of things... How do you live on ~£25k for years on end?

>how do you live on £25k for years on end?

Ever wonder why slavery lasted for thousands of years? Same mentality. People get so used to making such pathetic salaries and are powerless to do anything about it that they start to justify their predicament with sayings like "money doesn't buy you happiness" and shit like that

I don't really get what your point is. Those salaries are all in the same ball park mentioned. Especially when you consider that you're living in London - those salaries are slap bang in the middle of what you would expect.

My point is: I went from 25 to 36 in 2 years. Where do you think I'll be in 10 years? How the fuck does OP have 3 jobs making only 25?

I agree, 36 is very much average at best - I said so myself.

I'm not having a go, but your situation is exactly what I'm describing.

What is the difference between 25k and 30k (or your the 36k you're 'waiting for')? It's a bit of extra beer money at the end of the day - you still can't buy a house where you live on that salary.

Another example: outside London, big 4 get paid about 20k starting. By the time they're qualified (i.e. 3 years) they get about 30k. If you scale that up to London prices it's pretty much the same trajectory you described yet you make out your situation is an exception to what I'm describing.

Do you think your earnings will continue to grow at that rate for the next 10 years? It sounds like you're passionate about your work which is good but you have to realise that this only happens to a few exceptions: salaries peak at around 40k (maybe higher in London but it's all relative to the cost of living).

What will 300k get you (property wise) in London? Not much. Even so, you'd need a salary of around 70k and excellent credit just to get a mortgage on such a property. At what point do you think you'll be earning 70k? Can you wait that long to buy your first property? Then there's the task of actually paying the mortgage off.

70k would put you in the top 2% of UK earners.

Even if you think you will reach this level, do you appreciate how much hard work it will take to reach this level? How much luck? How much time?

I'm not saying this to put you off but to compare your situation with the generation before you. You're working 40+hrs a week at a high skilled job (one you had to go to university for), probably commuting long hours to get there, having your performance monitored all for the POSSIBILITY that you'll one day be earning enough to reach the 'luxury' of owning somewhere to live.

In the 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's - hardly anyone went to university. Yet you could afford a HOUSE (not flat) working as a store clerk or whatever. There are MILLIONAIRE dumbasses who have no skills, no education, no inherited wealth - all through sheer luck of being born at the right time. They own their properties outright whereas you have to work like they never have imagined just for the remote possibility of owning a fraction of what they have.

How this relates to salary: 20k, 25k, 30k, 40k, even 50 or 60k - it's largely irrelevant. Yes, 40k is twice as much as 20k - but they're both a drop in the ocean compared with the cost of property.

If you want a nice salary with low responsibility you should try and work for the government.

I work for the MoD in the midlands, earn 40k and I barely do anything while I'm at work, other than shitpost on Veeky Forums and watch youtube/movies.

all of the important cities.

>Another example: outside London, big 4 get paid about 20k starting.

Wtf, big 8 here were paying more than that in 1980

unbelievable. the top 2% in the US is like 500k/yr.

you sound under 30, so jobs for those with 5 years or less will not have a great difference between them.

changes might come when people have 8+ years (over 30 y.o.) and have been promoted several times. i know quite a few people who are in different professional professions in london who all started on around £20k (some less) upto 10 years ago and have progressed onto salaries between £70-90k.

the 3 professions you listed have (semi-)natural caps to salaries.

i agree to your point of diminishing returns for certain salaries. i know someone who got £8k pay rise, but once you calculated the increase in work and the deductions, it was a couple of pounds more per hour.

>I'm a single guy with a history of depression
banks don't care about that, you are making a thing of that. lose your excuses.

don't they only care about your credit history?

>Big salaries are possible here
>Big salaries are possible if you work in blech, government *yuk *puke
>Deddy has correct accent. kys.

Unless you are a specialist with a decade of experience you wont be making much over 20k in the uk

I have no idea why Europeans flock here because we treat them like shit then dispose of them when they ask for a raise or a promotion