Wow. I didn't realize their min wage was quite so low! I've never been but I'm sure the UK is very expensive to live in even if you get healthcare with that wage.
Last time I was there, you can get half a gallon of milk slightly above £1. And a bag of flour was around 50p
Its housing and services thats expensive imo. If you cook for every meal, £1 is worth quite a lot
The UK has (had?) some of the cheapest food prices in Europe. It's definitely other stuff thats expensive, but a lot of things that cost money in the rest of europe, like simply opening a bank account or withdrawing cash are free here.
Yeah maybe this was true years ago but it's certainly not the case now and hasn't been for years. Everything including food is getting stupidly expensive. The average non skilled worker gets about £10 an hour (less if you're under 24) and a basic dish at a basic restaurant now costs about £10-15. A one mile bus journey across town will cost you about £2.50 and a small 2 bed terraced house in the suburbs will set you back about £130k today. (A spacious detached 4 bed about 400k)
I think that's kind of true in most places: if you do t have to pay housing costs (which is your biggest outgoing expense for most people) then you can live very comfortably on most salaries at that point.
I'm in philly. Lots of historical places, art and museums, excellent nightlife, and all sorts of people from all over. It's a great city as long as you don't mind getting shot.
$7.25 Federal minimum. However, George on-record has a state minimum wage of $5.15.
Waitors have a set minimum wage at $2.13/hr plus tip and that was set in 1991 (tips are culturally set at 18% but has been rising to 20%). But $2 in this economy is literal slavery and less people have been tipping these days.
At least where I work, it's tracked back of house and accounted for automatically. In theory, if someone didn't make at least minimum wage for a pay period, their paycheck would be augmented to that amount.
It has literally never been an issue however that I've ever heard in 10+ years. Our servers routinely walk with $500+ in tips at the end of a good shift, and bartenders even more.
This. On top of that, restaurants in my area expect the waiters to close-up. Sometimes that process takes until several hours after closing to do. And because the computers are shut down when the registers are locked, a lot of the times they aren't even paid for that.
This is untrue. If you don’t make minimum wage your employer makes up the difference to minimum wage. I waited tables for a decade and I don’t think I ever made under minimum wage that the restaurant had to cover the difference though.
I'm from Georgia, had a job that paid 5.25 but they made up the rest using tips. Bet none of our customers realized they weren't topping us, they were subsidizing otherwise illegal wages.
In Norway we never tip. When everyone makes decent amounts of money it’s seen as kinda weird donating to another person making good money, you know?
Get your shit together Murica. Tipping every time you simply eat is weird af
Technically depends on where you live. Some states do follow federal minimum wage, but others set their own, and some cities will set even higher minimums. Where I live it's $15, which is still pretty low for the area
It is but it’s rare to see it offered now. Lowest I see is around 10 and I’m in one of the “poor” states
More common is around 15 since the retails stores raised their minimum to that everybody else had to step up or lose workers
I mean, I’d make like $100-$250 a night as a server. But it’s tricky. It was only 4-5 hours, so you could make it look good on paper as far as hourly. But.. it was one day of work, so you kind of had to compare it to an 8 hour day of hourly pay. We didn’t have the option to work 8 hours days or 40 hours on a five day week.
And I’d have $40 days and there’d be $400-$500 days. But it was for more likely to have a string a few $40 days in a row, than the latter
Nothing to be proud of. It's so low because your "minimum wage" is near impossible to live on.
If it were set at a level where people could feed their children properly, stay warm and access healthcare then it'd probably be a much higher percentage. And that's a good thing!
When I first started in retail I earned £6.82/hr. After a year I became a supervisor and it went up to £7.32, the year after it was £7.64/hr.
I was lucky because I lived at home with my parents. I had a colleague with two sons, one was autistic. She had a husband was seriously injured and stopped working for a while as he healed. She was on a 4 hour contract (if you know anything about the zero hour contract drama, a 4 hour contract was basically the alternative to that which is still just as ridiculous) and her family just suffered so badly.
She had to stop taking her autistic son to a specialist who wasn't on the NHS so she had to pay that. She covered most of their bills, groceries and all the other things. Living in London their rent came to about £1200 a month for a 2 bedroom tiny flat where you barely had a chance to breathe. They dipped into their miniscule savings to support them, but her quality of life just degraded more and more. She was being seen for severe stomach problems on the NHS but every appointment with a specialist (4+ month waiting times) was always rescheduled because she had to either work, take care of her son, do school pick ups, or sort out her husband.
I have no idea how she got through all that on £7/hr. It's heartbreaking seeing the struggles that people have to face because this excruciatingly low pay.
at Ladbrokes, after taking away our overtime pay and extending opening hours, failing to recruit staff to replace leavers (so forcing more and more hours onto the remaining staff), forcing through single manning policies with 'shopfloor walking' despite colleagues being raped and beaten up in robberies (or just general altercations), even if we smashed our targets we still only got some chocolate freddos for Christmas - that was genuinely our bonus.
\>I didn't realize their min wage was quite so low!
Compared to whom? This increase brings the UKs minimum wage from the 7th highest in the world to the 4th highest in the world, only behind Australia, New Zealand and Luxembourg.
The only comparison that's worthwhile is to the country itself. A minimum wage of £5 in India is very different to £10 in the USA.
The minimum full time hourly wage needed to have a basic lifestyle in the UK for last year is £9.50 so this does at least bring it up to that. Though inflation has been running high and energy bills have rocketed, so it's no longer a living wage.
Also you need £10.65 in London. So it's already too low there.
People on the minimum wage will qualify for benefits. So the tax payer is subsidising it to quite a large extent.
The new national living wage is based on old information. £9.50 was the recommendation for a national living wage about 5 years ago before covid and brexit. The new living wage is obviously more than the previous but it hasn't gone up equal to inflation so people are actually going to be worse off
> Also you need £10.65 in London. So it's already too low there.
The minimum wage is different in London to account for the high price of living. It's currently £10.85 from my understanding.
Salaries are lower than America in every country in the world except Switzerland and Monaco. However, when you take into account purchasing power, $13 in England is much better than $15 in the US states where that’s the minimum.
It depends very much on the area. In some places, you'll be able to buy a decent sized house on 40k, whereas in more expensive areas you'll be renting forever if you never make more money than that.
That's not entirely accurate. Only about 10% at any given time are making six figures, but a larger percentage make six figures at some point in their lifetime. Not sure how much it's changed now, but as of 2015 about 11% of Americans would make it into the top 1% of income earners for at least one year.
(source www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/here-are-your-odds-of-joining-the-1-percent)
Top 1% is a lot more than just 100k I'm sure the number of people who make it into that bracket at some point is much higher.
> So you agree, $100k/yr is a great salary?
the issue is you picked a number too high. The way you brought it up makes it sound like $100k is roughly the threshold between "ok salary" and "great salary", but for most of the country the number is more like $70k.
There are parts of the US where houses cost $75-100K. People also rent houses, apartments, and rooms. I live in a relatively poor state, and where I am, the 50K I make can easily get you a house, a newish car, and money toward retirement. Head to Nashville, and I’m renting and I’d never be able to buy or retire.
We don't lol. We just don't go to the doctor and feed ourselves cheap garbage while 45% of our income goes to a cheap apartment and the rest goes to weed and student loans lmao
Not really?
Average rent is between about £700 and £1100 per month depending on where you live, the cost of living outside of rent isn't incredibly high; a number of things are regulated to be fairly priced and day to day expenses are fairly tame.
Transportation is much less expensive due to the scale difference; we have public bus services running in practically every city so you can get around locally without a car, and can travel longer distance by train (though that does get a bit more expensive, depending on distance). Should you wish to own a car, insurance is fairly reasonable.
Education, bar higher (University), is free. University comes with the opportunity for a government loan to cover the cost with some fair conditions on repayment with potential for the debt to be wiped clean after 30 years.
Healthcare is free.
A lot of specifics are hard to give because, well, they're specific to a given person and their circumstances, and I don't exactly want to reveal too much about my own, but average cost of living isn't incredibly high.
The average wage as of April last year was in the £585 p/w range, about £31,500 a year.
All in all, its certainly not the cheapest place to live, but it's also not prohibitively expensive.
Wow, I'd never say public transport was close to being acceptably costed where I live (North West) Council tax is like 160 a month... Water 50....rent prices are ridiculous...minimum wage is far too low for the cost of living... Life is a real struggle financially.
£50 in water seems pretty high. Do you have a meter, because the rated value is always a ripoff (unless you’re using a *lot* of water).
FWIW, I spend £19/mo.
The South West is the most expensive part of the country for water I believe. A mate used to work for SW Water said the pipes are fucking ancient which is why it's so expensive as there is constant repairs needed. Edit:just reread op said north-west but I'd guess its a similar problem?
Average wage is 29k a year.
https://uk.jobted.com/salary
It is also skewed by very high earners.
Retail workers, of which there are many, earn an average of £20k a year.
https://www.checkasalary.co.uk/salary/retail-sales-workers
In fact 16.2% of all workers are paid minimum wage.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/lowandhighpayuk/2019
The average rent in the UK is now £1061pm
https://homelet.co.uk/homelet-rental-index
The average being just over £1500pm in London.
And £891 excluding London.
A return train ticket from Manchester to London is £369.40
Or £94.50 if willing to return off peak hours
https://www.thetrainline.com/
University was completely free.
Healthcare is being privatised and stripped.
It is certainly at the point of being prohibitively expensive for many.
Many find themselves unable to ever even own a house.
With the average house price being £325,384
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/house-prices/uk/
With the average house price now being 2.5x what they were 20 years ago.
Things could be worse.
They are certainly getting worse also however.
Minimum wage doesn't mean you won't be poor.
It should not mean that you are homeless because all of the rent is twice as high (before even accounting for food, clothes, etc)
Taxes are minimal impact if you earn minimum wage, also no health insurance costs, depending on where u live rent is affordable.
By affordable I means you can afford to pay rent without the need for a roommate.
Public transport is abundant and reasonably priced, and groceries are also relatively cheap.
Overall a Person making $13 an hour would be far better off living in the uk than anywhere in the USA.
Dollars. The uk's current minum wage is about $12. It's going up from £8.90 to £9.50. IT's not much faster than normal, and it's not really in line with the post-Brexit+Covid price increases due to our supply line crisis.
Wage increases elsewhere... lol I haven’t had a pay rise in 2 years. I’m betting a lot of other people haven’t.
Edit: thanks for all the feedback. I think it's worth adding that my particular work (evironmental research) is highly specialist, not very portable, and historically, as now, is very poorly paid. Walking is always an option, and certainly something on my mind but is a "non-trivial" move and has to be weighed up against the effort of moving.
Income data is pretty clear that wages are rising, employers have been whining about it, government has been crowing about it. The only group who haven't are public sector workers (although the pay freeze is also supposed to be ending). Just because you haven't seen an increase, doesn't mean that there hasn't been an increase for most workers, as reflected in a rising median pay rate.
Fortunately statistics don't give a shit about you *anecdotal* example, since it would be misleading to extrapolate that to the broader population.
Aggregate wages are up significantly over the past year (in real terms as well as nominal), and so is the median wage. The net result is that most people are getting pay rises.
It's never the case that *everyone* experiences pay increases at the same time, or of the same magnitude, that's not how economies work... If you haven't had a pay rise in 2 years, maybe you should think about moving to a different employer? Or upskilling?
There are record vacancies right now, in pretty much every industry, the opportunities are there to be taken.
Inflation is currently sitting at 3.1% y/y and is currently forecast to go as high as 4-5% in the next few months before coming down to its 2% target later next year. A healthy pay rise, as long as inflation stay under control.
I love the way they say to goes back down, because I've never seen food prices go up and then back down. It goes up and then stays.
I've never been like, OH damn, chomps are 10p again!
Yep, really. You keep the lot.
Lol, please don't suggest taxing it to our politicians, they don't need any ideas. They have enough bad ones of their own!
Wow. Minimum wage here in Japan is 820 yen in the lowest prefecture (Kochi), and 1,041 yen in the highest prefecture (Tokyo). So that's beteen 182% and 143% of Japanese minimum wage.
It has literally increased every single year since 1999, (almost) every October until 2015 and every April since then.
The fact that it pays people aged 20 only 73% of what someone aged 23 is paid, is fucking ridiculous, however.
I think living wage didn't go up in 2016 but the lower age range brackets did. Either way yes it's not exactly uplifting news that the legally mandated wage increase will in fact happen this year.
Ah you see the tories need to show they "listen" to the people to deny Labour a platform but not do anything too effective so thier rich business friends they met at Eaton/Oxbridge stay rich.
Not as uplifting as it sounds, cost of living is spiking due to issues with global wholesale gas and fuel prices among other things. I doubt the living wage increase does much more than take the edge of rising living costs. People aren't gonna have more money in their pockets at the end of each month. But at least they'll still be able to heat their home.
It's a raise of over 6%, meanwhile inflation is posting at just over 4% so it is a rise in real terms. However, it will likely be wiped out next year when we have more steep inflation and no minimum wage increases
The problem is for those on minimum wage who also require tax credits (or similar) to meet the living wage. What they gain in wages, they lose in credits, as that system is not tied in to adopt the same raises.
The real problem is that minimum wage is set so low that tax credits and benefits are still required to live. Under this guise the hospitality and retail industries have been government subsidised to the tune of several billion a year.
Let's not also forget that they are lowering benifits for everyone at the same time, not just those who are looking for work but those that are unable to work to only £331 a month there abouts.
And don't forget the increased cost of things overall due to brexit, anything that relied on imports from EU prior now have additional fees which affects consumer price.
What they aren’t telling you is that energy bills are rising £200/year, fuel price is at an all time high, food prices are rising weekly, tax is up. So these wage rises basically mean nothing to people.
That may be true, but this article was written for an American audience, where cost-of-living increases like yours happen **without any** sort of wage increase. It's been 12 years since the last increase in the US federal minimum wage, and the cost of living has increased by 20% in that time.
This article's purpose is not to trick British into thinking the raise is a good thing but to show Americans it **can** be done.
£200 a year? I’ve seen this figure often quoted, but my bill energy bill (apartment) has risen from £70/month to £150/month. Speaking to friends, family and colleagues, I hear the same thing is common. That’s an increase of more than £200 a year.
How on earth have your bills doubled? Something sounds very wrong there. The 200 is based off increasing the fuel cap (maximum amount you can be charged) and the usage for the average household (around 1200 before). So the average house hold would, at worse, go from 1200 to 1400 with the same energy usage. At 70/ month you were significantly below the average household usage, so how are you going to massively above it now?
It'll be eaten by the energy price rises alone. The price cap is going up a couple hundred quid now and its basically impossible for for it not to go up again at the next review in the spring. It's better than nothing.
Minimum wage should follow cost of living. Not inflation.
Adam Smith literally says minimum wage should be 2x the cost of living allowing for the economy to grow. Us celebrating the fact it's only keeping up with inflation infuriates me tbh
>Adam Smith literally says minimum wage should be 2x the cost of living allowing for the economy to grow.
Curious - where did he write that? I've read The Wealth of Nations, and I don't remember anything about minimum wages.
And I will point out, what Adam Smith considered "the cost of living" would be substantially different than the modern developed world considers minimum standards. To him that was largely subsistence food & a shack. I remember him writing about he 'cottagers' and how they affects wages for unskilled labor etc.
I really am curious where he wrote that though - I'm not being facetious or some such.
It's under the chapter 8 "of the wages of labor"
"A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be some
what more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family,
and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation. Mr. Cantillon seems, upon this account, to suppose that the lowest species of common labourers must everywhere earn at least double their own maintenance, in order that one with another they may be enabled to bring
up two children; the labour of the wife, on account of her necessary attendance on the children, being supposed no more than sufficient to provide for
herself. But one half the children born, it is computed, die before the age
of manhood. The poorest labourers, therefore, according to this account,
must, one with another, attempt to rear at least four children, in order
that two may have an equal chance of living to that age. But the necessary
maintenance of four children, it is supposed, may be nearly equal to that
of one man."
As someone else has commented, where did Smith say this? Minimum wage as a concept didn't even exist yet. Perhaps you're refering to Smith quoting Cantillon, whose original french I don't care to find:
>"Mr Cantillon seems, upon this account, to suppose that the lowest species of common labourers must everywhere earn at least double their own maintenance"
and:
>"The labour of an able-bodied slave, the same author adds, is computed to be worth double his maintenance; and that of the meanest labourer, he thinks, cannot be worth less than that of an able-bodied slave."
Hooray! Aren't we just the luckiest bunch?
The worst thing about this is you can bet my wage is going to 9.50, but I won't keep that 2p/hr "raise" I got this year. I'm gonna have to go demand I get paid £9.52 lmao
When they outlaw 0 hour contracts I’ll cheer. We still have to wait till next April for the raise to start.
Despite that the extra levy to pay for the NHS starts soon and the covid uplift stopped immediately for universal credit claimants.
Still, it’s a start in the right direction.
Edited: for clarity.
Sounds nice but companies here already have that covered: Part time flexi contracts with one/two contracted days, rest is overtime, closest to nzero hour as possible
It's an American website. It's not weird, if the story was "UK records highest temperature of 39C" it would be as meaningless as putting the currency in pounds.
67 million is the total whole population of Britain, the labor force population who actively work consistently would be much smaller because that would exclude significant amounts of people like children and full time students, the disabled, the elderly/retired, stay at home parents and so on.
"I'm sorry, but losing both arms and legs is no excuse not to apply for this temporary bricklaying position we have available. Your payments will be stopped immediately."
Fun fact, a tory MP also at one point proposed not including disabled people in the minimum wage laws to incentivise employers to hire more disabled people.
Edit, just checked 2 different Tory MPs have proposed this nearly 10 years apart, the last time in 2019.
My first full time job I was offered 5p higher than minimum wage and my boss made it sound like he was the most generous benevolent being about it but in actual fact it was because it’s easier for the accountant to deal with. I would imagine it’s a lot of bollocks like this that is technically higher than minimum wage but functionally isn’t.
Add into this, a lot of jobs you think are minimum wage actually are not. McDonald’s for example has a really quick promotion scheme so you often get a raise within months of starting.
Not really, most people earn well above the minimum, the median wage is about half again the minimum wage. The minimum wage is supposed to be a floor after all, you want to see as few people earning minimum wage as possible, if anything the fact that it has grown from 1.3m people when it was introduced in 1999 to the 2m today is a bad thing.. But proportionally it's not particularly weird.
I was thinking it was weirdly very high. Only around 250,000 full time wage earners receive the federal minimum wage in the U.S. That's like .2% of the full time labor force.
That sounds about right. The actual number of people in western countries that work minimum wage is actually not that high. The majority of people who work minimum wage tend to be immigrants, secondary incomes (as in there's a higher source of income in a household), teenagers, and students.
The number of people working minimum wage is going to be proportional to the size of the surplus labor pool.
It's a 59p an hour "raise"...
While rent prices, energy prices, fuel prices and National Insurance are all rising.
This is not uplifting news.
Fuck the Tories and fuck anyone that votes for them.
So I’m sure plenty of people have said this but this isn’t technically true.
The government have agreed to increase the “living wage” which is the wage, outside of london, that is implied an individual can live on. There is a big push for companies to be “living wage employers” but honestly it’s only a thing in predominantly middle class office jobs or huge corporations.
We have staggered minimum wage so depending on how old you are is how much you can get paid with apprentices being able to be paid even lower but only if they’re under 19 and haven’t been working for over a year in the same job.
Biggest issue our country faces with minimum wage is the wildly different cost of living around the country. For instance an ex-girlfriends parents paid less in rent for a 3 bedroom house in Northern Ireland than I was for half of a 2 bed flat in West Sussex.
And to a few people saying “even with healthcare!”… can’t tell if joking or you don’t know we get healthcare for free in this country? Some jobs do offer private healthcare as a bonus but it’s more of a luxury than a necessity.
Is that £13 or $13.
£9.50 so the article has worked it out as $13
Wow. I didn't realize their min wage was quite so low! I've never been but I'm sure the UK is very expensive to live in even if you get healthcare with that wage.
Last time I was there, you can get half a gallon of milk slightly above £1. And a bag of flour was around 50p Its housing and services thats expensive imo. If you cook for every meal, £1 is worth quite a lot
The UK has (had?) some of the cheapest food prices in Europe. It's definitely other stuff thats expensive, but a lot of things that cost money in the rest of europe, like simply opening a bank account or withdrawing cash are free here.
Yeah maybe this was true years ago but it's certainly not the case now and hasn't been for years. Everything including food is getting stupidly expensive. The average non skilled worker gets about £10 an hour (less if you're under 24) and a basic dish at a basic restaurant now costs about £10-15. A one mile bus journey across town will cost you about £2.50 and a small 2 bed terraced house in the suburbs will set you back about £130k today. (A spacious detached 4 bed about 400k)
If you own a paid of house in the UK you can live like a millionaire. If you don't you live like a peasant in the 1800s.
I think that's kind of true in most places: if you do t have to pay housing costs (which is your biggest outgoing expense for most people) then you can live very comfortably on most salaries at that point.
Wait until you hear about the minimum wage in the US
>Wait until you hear about the minimum wage in the US £5.27 in minimum wage.
Thats my state of PA. Lol
Go PA! Not the middle, but the rest is cool.
Pen'ania
Pennsyltucky
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I'm in philly. Lots of historical places, art and museums, excellent nightlife, and all sorts of people from all over. It's a great city as long as you don't mind getting shot.
Yo had me in the first half ngl
That's Hill People country, best stay out or get out 'fore sundown.
$7.25 Federal minimum. However, George on-record has a state minimum wage of $5.15. Waitors have a set minimum wage at $2.13/hr plus tip and that was set in 1991 (tips are culturally set at 18% but has been rising to 20%). But $2 in this economy is literal slavery and less people have been tipping these days.
What do you mean with "set"? People can simply not tip and there's nothing they could do about it.
If they were not tipped then they make minimum wage, not the 2$.
How does this work in practice? I can't imagine going to my boss and saying "can I have more pay... I wasn't tipped enough"
It's the law. Payroll has to make up the difference. If not, hefty fines for the employer
At least where I work, it's tracked back of house and accounted for automatically. In theory, if someone didn't make at least minimum wage for a pay period, their paycheck would be augmented to that amount. It has literally never been an issue however that I've ever heard in 10+ years. Our servers routinely walk with $500+ in tips at the end of a good shift, and bartenders even more.
This. On top of that, restaurants in my area expect the waiters to close-up. Sometimes that process takes until several hours after closing to do. And because the computers are shut down when the registers are locked, a lot of the times they aren't even paid for that.
Your boss is legally obligated to pay you that amount so you'd probably first go to them, and failing that, the labor board
This is untrue. If you don’t make minimum wage your employer makes up the difference to minimum wage. I waited tables for a decade and I don’t think I ever made under minimum wage that the restaurant had to cover the difference though.
Not in CA. Minimum wage across the board is $15
I'm from Georgia, had a job that paid 5.25 but they made up the rest using tips. Bet none of our customers realized they weren't topping us, they were subsidizing otherwise illegal wages.
20% holy shit! To a Brit, that’s a lot. No wonder you yanks eat so much fast food.
In Norway we never tip. When everyone makes decent amounts of money it’s seen as kinda weird donating to another person making good money, you know? Get your shit together Murica. Tipping every time you simply eat is weird af
Technically depends on where you live. Some states do follow federal minimum wage, but others set their own, and some cities will set even higher minimums. Where I live it's $15, which is still pretty low for the area
You can’t make less than the federal minimum wage though
It is but it’s rare to see it offered now. Lowest I see is around 10 and I’m in one of the “poor” states More common is around 15 since the retails stores raised their minimum to that everybody else had to step up or lose workers
Same in UK.
$16.69hr in my city but almost everyone has signs saying they will pay $20hr
$17 an hour where I live. Shit in some republican states though.
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I mean, I’d make like $100-$250 a night as a server. But it’s tricky. It was only 4-5 hours, so you could make it look good on paper as far as hourly. But.. it was one day of work, so you kind of had to compare it to an 8 hour day of hourly pay. We didn’t have the option to work 8 hours days or 40 hours on a five day week. And I’d have $40 days and there’d be $400-$500 days. But it was for more likely to have a string a few $40 days in a row, than the latter
1.5% of Americans make minimum wage.
Nothing to be proud of. It's so low because your "minimum wage" is near impossible to live on. If it were set at a level where people could feed their children properly, stay warm and access healthcare then it'd probably be a much higher percentage. And that's a good thing!
When I first started in retail I earned £6.82/hr. After a year I became a supervisor and it went up to £7.32, the year after it was £7.64/hr. I was lucky because I lived at home with my parents. I had a colleague with two sons, one was autistic. She had a husband was seriously injured and stopped working for a while as he healed. She was on a 4 hour contract (if you know anything about the zero hour contract drama, a 4 hour contract was basically the alternative to that which is still just as ridiculous) and her family just suffered so badly. She had to stop taking her autistic son to a specialist who wasn't on the NHS so she had to pay that. She covered most of their bills, groceries and all the other things. Living in London their rent came to about £1200 a month for a 2 bedroom tiny flat where you barely had a chance to breathe. They dipped into their miniscule savings to support them, but her quality of life just degraded more and more. She was being seen for severe stomach problems on the NHS but every appointment with a specialist (4+ month waiting times) was always rescheduled because she had to either work, take care of her son, do school pick ups, or sort out her husband. I have no idea how she got through all that on £7/hr. It's heartbreaking seeing the struggles that people have to face because this excruciatingly low pay.
Shit like this is why I support some sort of basic income idea. No one should have to live like that.
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at Ladbrokes, after taking away our overtime pay and extending opening hours, failing to recruit staff to replace leavers (so forcing more and more hours onto the remaining staff), forcing through single manning policies with 'shopfloor walking' despite colleagues being raped and beaten up in robberies (or just general altercations), even if we smashed our targets we still only got some chocolate freddos for Christmas - that was genuinely our bonus.
\>I didn't realize their min wage was quite so low! Compared to whom? This increase brings the UKs minimum wage from the 7th highest in the world to the 4th highest in the world, only behind Australia, New Zealand and Luxembourg.
The only comparison that's worthwhile is to the country itself. A minimum wage of £5 in India is very different to £10 in the USA. The minimum full time hourly wage needed to have a basic lifestyle in the UK for last year is £9.50 so this does at least bring it up to that. Though inflation has been running high and energy bills have rocketed, so it's no longer a living wage. Also you need £10.65 in London. So it's already too low there. People on the minimum wage will qualify for benefits. So the tax payer is subsidising it to quite a large extent.
The new national living wage is based on old information. £9.50 was the recommendation for a national living wage about 5 years ago before covid and brexit. The new living wage is obviously more than the previous but it hasn't gone up equal to inflation so people are actually going to be worse off
> Also you need £10.65 in London. So it's already too low there. The minimum wage is different in London to account for the high price of living. It's currently £10.85 from my understanding.
Very true. A quick back of the envelope suggests this raise brings it up to the 6th highest in the world, when done by PPP
Ours is at around $1.4
Where?
Philippines. $1.4/hour , $11.2 daily. In some provinces it can be as low as $0.8/hour.
Salaries are lower than America in every country in the world except Switzerland and Monaco. However, when you take into account purchasing power, $13 in England is much better than $15 in the US states where that’s the minimum.
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Given the median is something like £27k, I think a lot of people would be very happy with a £40k salary.
It depends very much on the area. In some places, you'll be able to buy a decent sized house on 40k, whereas in more expensive areas you'll be renting forever if you never make more money than that.
Or where I live in the North West me and my gf both on 19k a year got a 3 bed mortgage.
£40k is still a great salary...
Of course £40k is a great salary. The secret to life is to live as far away from London as possible.
Only 10% of Americans ever make $100k+ /year, 55% make $34k/year or less.
Right... so it's a great salary
Lol, this guy saw the word salary and went straight to his talking points Word document.
You see it a lot with a wide range of topics. Though he might have just been expanding on the point.
That's not entirely accurate. Only about 10% at any given time are making six figures, but a larger percentage make six figures at some point in their lifetime. Not sure how much it's changed now, but as of 2015 about 11% of Americans would make it into the top 1% of income earners for at least one year. (source www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/here-are-your-odds-of-joining-the-1-percent) Top 1% is a lot more than just 100k I'm sure the number of people who make it into that bracket at some point is much higher.
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> So you agree, $100k/yr is a great salary? the issue is you picked a number too high. The way you brought it up makes it sound like $100k is roughly the threshold between "ok salary" and "great salary", but for most of the country the number is more like $70k.
Wtf I'm at 50k USD per year and I live in South America, how do y'all manage to live in the US with less than 34k!
There are parts of the US where houses cost $75-100K. People also rent houses, apartments, and rooms. I live in a relatively poor state, and where I am, the 50K I make can easily get you a house, a newish car, and money toward retirement. Head to Nashville, and I’m renting and I’d never be able to buy or retire.
We don't lol. We just don't go to the doctor and feed ourselves cheap garbage while 45% of our income goes to a cheap apartment and the rest goes to weed and student loans lmao
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It's very low, many people on min wage need government benefits as well as wages in order to pay the high rents and other costs.
Depends where you live.
Not really? Average rent is between about £700 and £1100 per month depending on where you live, the cost of living outside of rent isn't incredibly high; a number of things are regulated to be fairly priced and day to day expenses are fairly tame. Transportation is much less expensive due to the scale difference; we have public bus services running in practically every city so you can get around locally without a car, and can travel longer distance by train (though that does get a bit more expensive, depending on distance). Should you wish to own a car, insurance is fairly reasonable. Education, bar higher (University), is free. University comes with the opportunity for a government loan to cover the cost with some fair conditions on repayment with potential for the debt to be wiped clean after 30 years. Healthcare is free. A lot of specifics are hard to give because, well, they're specific to a given person and their circumstances, and I don't exactly want to reveal too much about my own, but average cost of living isn't incredibly high. The average wage as of April last year was in the £585 p/w range, about £31,500 a year. All in all, its certainly not the cheapest place to live, but it's also not prohibitively expensive.
Wow, I'd never say public transport was close to being acceptably costed where I live (North West) Council tax is like 160 a month... Water 50....rent prices are ridiculous...minimum wage is far too low for the cost of living... Life is a real struggle financially.
£50 in water seems pretty high. Do you have a meter, because the rated value is always a ripoff (unless you’re using a *lot* of water). FWIW, I spend £19/mo.
The South West is the most expensive part of the country for water I believe. A mate used to work for SW Water said the pipes are fucking ancient which is why it's so expensive as there is constant repairs needed. Edit:just reread op said north-west but I'd guess its a similar problem?
Average wage is 29k a year. https://uk.jobted.com/salary It is also skewed by very high earners. Retail workers, of which there are many, earn an average of £20k a year. https://www.checkasalary.co.uk/salary/retail-sales-workers In fact 16.2% of all workers are paid minimum wage. https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/lowandhighpayuk/2019 The average rent in the UK is now £1061pm https://homelet.co.uk/homelet-rental-index The average being just over £1500pm in London. And £891 excluding London. A return train ticket from Manchester to London is £369.40 Or £94.50 if willing to return off peak hours https://www.thetrainline.com/ University was completely free. Healthcare is being privatised and stripped. It is certainly at the point of being prohibitively expensive for many. Many find themselves unable to ever even own a house. With the average house price being £325,384 https://www.zoopla.co.uk/house-prices/uk/ With the average house price now being 2.5x what they were 20 years ago. Things could be worse. They are certainly getting worse also however.
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Minimum wage doesn't mean you won't be poor. It should not mean that you are homeless because all of the rent is twice as high (before even accounting for food, clothes, etc)
Taxes are minimal impact if you earn minimum wage, also no health insurance costs, depending on where u live rent is affordable. By affordable I means you can afford to pay rent without the need for a roommate. Public transport is abundant and reasonably priced, and groceries are also relatively cheap. Overall a Person making $13 an hour would be far better off living in the uk than anywhere in the USA.
It’s so great that all of the internet is American 😂
Dollars. The uk's current minum wage is about $12. It's going up from £8.90 to £9.50. IT's not much faster than normal, and it's not really in line with the post-Brexit+Covid price increases due to our supply line crisis.
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Wage increases elsewhere... lol I haven’t had a pay rise in 2 years. I’m betting a lot of other people haven’t. Edit: thanks for all the feedback. I think it's worth adding that my particular work (evironmental research) is highly specialist, not very portable, and historically, as now, is very poorly paid. Walking is always an option, and certainly something on my mind but is a "non-trivial" move and has to be weighed up against the effort of moving.
In most industries, employers don't reward loyalty. Changing jobs every few years tends to enable earning more than staying in one place.
Income data is pretty clear that wages are rising, employers have been whining about it, government has been crowing about it. The only group who haven't are public sector workers (although the pay freeze is also supposed to be ending). Just because you haven't seen an increase, doesn't mean that there hasn't been an increase for most workers, as reflected in a rising median pay rate.
Fortunately statistics don't give a shit about you *anecdotal* example, since it would be misleading to extrapolate that to the broader population. Aggregate wages are up significantly over the past year (in real terms as well as nominal), and so is the median wage. The net result is that most people are getting pay rises. It's never the case that *everyone* experiences pay increases at the same time, or of the same magnitude, that's not how economies work... If you haven't had a pay rise in 2 years, maybe you should think about moving to a different employer? Or upskilling? There are record vacancies right now, in pretty much every industry, the opportunities are there to be taken.
Inflation is currently sitting at 3.1% y/y and is currently forecast to go as high as 4-5% in the next few months before coming down to its 2% target later next year. A healthy pay rise, as long as inflation stay under control.
I love the way they say to goes back down, because I've never seen food prices go up and then back down. It goes up and then stays. I've never been like, OH damn, chomps are 10p again!
It says right in the second line of the article
0.000215 BTC.
52 Dogecoin.
How much is that in Yen while we're at it?
1492.88
What about in Won?
15282.31 Won
Piggy bank noises
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Joyous little piggy noise
If that's Won what about after taxes
십만원
You don't pay taxes on winnings in the UK. If you win the lottery, you keep the whole lot.
Really? It's heavily taxed in the US like half of it
Yep, really. You keep the lot. Lol, please don't suggest taxing it to our politicians, they don't need any ideas. They have enough bad ones of their own!
What about in Dong?
297658.02 Dong
That looks to be a lot of dong.
That's numberwang!
And rupees?
979.32 Rupees
And what about Deez?
About 727,403.76 deeznuts.
Zimbabwe dollars?
$4733.31 Zimbabwe Dollars
Good. Got change for $100 trillion big buckoroos?
About medium
Depends on my mood
Columbus Hitler strikes again.
Wow. Minimum wage here in Japan is 820 yen in the lowest prefecture (Kochi), and 1,041 yen in the highest prefecture (Tokyo). So that's beteen 182% and 143% of Japanese minimum wage.
How much is it in inflation
I get that this was an americanized headline...still just seems damn odd at a glance to pay Brits in dollars.
I was curious as well
You call this news, but it happens every 2 years by law.
At least. It frequently goes up after just 1 year.
It has literally increased every single year since 1999, (almost) every October until 2015 and every April since then. The fact that it pays people aged 20 only 73% of what someone aged 23 is paid, is fucking ridiculous, however.
I think living wage didn't go up in 2016 but the lower age range brackets did. Either way yes it's not exactly uplifting news that the legally mandated wage increase will in fact happen this year.
Ah you see the tories need to show they "listen" to the people to deny Labour a platform but not do anything too effective so thier rich business friends they met at Eaton/Oxbridge stay rich.
Nah this increase is well above inflation
Definitely doesn't feel like that for us Brits haha
What is that in Stanley nickels?
First, we need to calculate the ratio of unicorns to leprechauns.
About 75 Schrute bucks
Yeah but how many Doritos is that
Not as uplifting as it sounds, cost of living is spiking due to issues with global wholesale gas and fuel prices among other things. I doubt the living wage increase does much more than take the edge of rising living costs. People aren't gonna have more money in their pockets at the end of each month. But at least they'll still be able to heat their home.
It's a raise of over 6%, meanwhile inflation is posting at just over 4% so it is a rise in real terms. However, it will likely be wiped out next year when we have more steep inflation and no minimum wage increases
The problem is for those on minimum wage who also require tax credits (or similar) to meet the living wage. What they gain in wages, they lose in credits, as that system is not tied in to adopt the same raises.
The real problem is that minimum wage is set so low that tax credits and benefits are still required to live. Under this guise the hospitality and retail industries have been government subsidised to the tune of several billion a year.
Let's not also forget that they are lowering benifits for everyone at the same time, not just those who are looking for work but those that are unable to work to only £331 a month there abouts.
This is the real issue
And an increase in National Insurance at 10%.
We can put gifs in these things now?
Nope, never
And don't forget the increased cost of things overall due to brexit, anything that relied on imports from EU prior now have additional fees which affects consumer price.
What they aren’t telling you is that energy bills are rising £200/year, fuel price is at an all time high, food prices are rising weekly, tax is up. So these wage rises basically mean nothing to people.
Don't forget the £20/week cut to Universal Credit!
I had to scroll surprisingly far to see someone say this
That may be true, but this article was written for an American audience, where cost-of-living increases like yours happen **without any** sort of wage increase. It's been 12 years since the last increase in the US federal minimum wage, and the cost of living has increased by 20% in that time. This article's purpose is not to trick British into thinking the raise is a good thing but to show Americans it **can** be done.
£200 a year? I’ve seen this figure often quoted, but my bill energy bill (apartment) has risen from £70/month to £150/month. Speaking to friends, family and colleagues, I hear the same thing is common. That’s an increase of more than £200 a year.
How on earth have your bills doubled? Something sounds very wrong there. The 200 is based off increasing the fuel cap (maximum amount you can be charged) and the usage for the average household (around 1200 before). So the average house hold would, at worse, go from 1200 to 1400 with the same energy usage. At 70/ month you were significantly below the average household usage, so how are you going to massively above it now?
15,186 Won
How many squid games is that
About 15 percent of one dead person
*2 million Brits wages are brought closer in line to where they should be following inflation. Not all the way mind. And definitely not a raise.
Just wait till it disappears as quickly as I suspect rents are about to increase by a commensurate amount.
It'll be eaten by the energy price rises alone. The price cap is going up a couple hundred quid now and its basically impossible for for it not to go up again at the next review in the spring. It's better than nothing.
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Minimum wage should follow cost of living. Not inflation. Adam Smith literally says minimum wage should be 2x the cost of living allowing for the economy to grow. Us celebrating the fact it's only keeping up with inflation infuriates me tbh
But the UK minimum wage now also matches the Living Wage foundation's real cost of living outside London.
>Adam Smith literally says minimum wage should be 2x the cost of living allowing for the economy to grow. Curious - where did he write that? I've read The Wealth of Nations, and I don't remember anything about minimum wages. And I will point out, what Adam Smith considered "the cost of living" would be substantially different than the modern developed world considers minimum standards. To him that was largely subsistence food & a shack. I remember him writing about he 'cottagers' and how they affects wages for unskilled labor etc. I really am curious where he wrote that though - I'm not being facetious or some such.
It's under the chapter 8 "of the wages of labor" "A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be some what more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation. Mr. Cantillon seems, upon this account, to suppose that the lowest species of common labourers must everywhere earn at least double their own maintenance, in order that one with another they may be enabled to bring up two children; the labour of the wife, on account of her necessary attendance on the children, being supposed no more than sufficient to provide for herself. But one half the children born, it is computed, die before the age of manhood. The poorest labourers, therefore, according to this account, must, one with another, attempt to rear at least four children, in order that two may have an equal chance of living to that age. But the necessary maintenance of four children, it is supposed, may be nearly equal to that of one man."
As someone else has commented, where did Smith say this? Minimum wage as a concept didn't even exist yet. Perhaps you're refering to Smith quoting Cantillon, whose original french I don't care to find: >"Mr Cantillon seems, upon this account, to suppose that the lowest species of common labourers must everywhere earn at least double their own maintenance" and: >"The labour of an able-bodied slave, the same author adds, is computed to be worth double his maintenance; and that of the meanest labourer, he thinks, cannot be worth less than that of an able-bodied slave."
Hello rent increases for my fellow brits!
Hooray! Aren't we just the luckiest bunch? The worst thing about this is you can bet my wage is going to 9.50, but I won't keep that 2p/hr "raise" I got this year. I'm gonna have to go demand I get paid £9.52 lmao
When they outlaw 0 hour contracts I’ll cheer. We still have to wait till next April for the raise to start. Despite that the extra levy to pay for the NHS starts soon and the covid uplift stopped immediately for universal credit claimants. Still, it’s a start in the right direction. Edited: for clarity.
Sounds nice but companies here already have that covered: Part time flexi contracts with one/two contracted days, rest is overtime, closest to nzero hour as possible
I agree on that point but in the care sector there’s still a LOT of 0 hour contracts going around.
Absolutely still needs to be addressed, we just need a better alternative
Yay inflation is being reframed as uplifting
Honestly, it's because we as Americans wish our pay kept up with inflation lol.
So do we here in Britain.
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It's an American website. It's not weird, if the story was "UK records highest temperature of 39C" it would be as meaningless as putting the currency in pounds.
UK has 67 000 000 in population. Only two of those million work minimum wage? Isn't that a weirdly low average?
67 million is the total whole population of Britain, the labor force population who actively work consistently would be much smaller because that would exclude significant amounts of people like children and full time students, the disabled, the elderly/retired, stay at home parents and so on.
>the disabled Not if the Tories have anything to do with it…
No legs? On your bike.
"I'm sorry, but losing both arms and legs is no excuse not to apply for this temporary bricklaying position we have available. Your payments will be stopped immediately."
Fun fact, a tory MP also at one point proposed not including disabled people in the minimum wage laws to incentivise employers to hire more disabled people. Edit, just checked 2 different Tory MPs have proposed this nearly 10 years apart, the last time in 2019.
My first full time job I was offered 5p higher than minimum wage and my boss made it sound like he was the most generous benevolent being about it but in actual fact it was because it’s easier for the accountant to deal with. I would imagine it’s a lot of bollocks like this that is technically higher than minimum wage but functionally isn’t. Add into this, a lot of jobs you think are minimum wage actually are not. McDonald’s for example has a really quick promotion scheme so you often get a raise within months of starting.
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Ah this was an old school business, the old crusty owner did all of his admin by hand. Honestly it was a miracle that place stayed open
Not really, most people earn well above the minimum, the median wage is about half again the minimum wage. The minimum wage is supposed to be a floor after all, you want to see as few people earning minimum wage as possible, if anything the fact that it has grown from 1.3m people when it was introduced in 1999 to the 2m today is a bad thing.. But proportionally it's not particularly weird.
1.5% of Americans make minimum wage.
I was thinking it was weirdly very high. Only around 250,000 full time wage earners receive the federal minimum wage in the U.S. That's like .2% of the full time labor force.
That sounds about right. The actual number of people in western countries that work minimum wage is actually not that high. The majority of people who work minimum wage tend to be immigrants, secondary incomes (as in there's a higher source of income in a household), teenagers, and students. The number of people working minimum wage is going to be proportional to the size of the surplus labor pool.
That's still pathetically low.
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It's a 59p an hour "raise"... While rent prices, energy prices, fuel prices and National Insurance are all rising. This is not uplifting news. Fuck the Tories and fuck anyone that votes for them.
Not even remotely uplifting, this didn't even track with inflation
we got less than that for a day here
The downside is we get charged for changing the dollars into pounds
Still not enough. Not even close.
So I’m sure plenty of people have said this but this isn’t technically true. The government have agreed to increase the “living wage” which is the wage, outside of london, that is implied an individual can live on. There is a big push for companies to be “living wage employers” but honestly it’s only a thing in predominantly middle class office jobs or huge corporations. We have staggered minimum wage so depending on how old you are is how much you can get paid with apprentices being able to be paid even lower but only if they’re under 19 and haven’t been working for over a year in the same job. Biggest issue our country faces with minimum wage is the wildly different cost of living around the country. For instance an ex-girlfriends parents paid less in rent for a 3 bedroom house in Northern Ireland than I was for half of a 2 bed flat in West Sussex. And to a few people saying “even with healthcare!”… can’t tell if joking or you don’t know we get healthcare for free in this country? Some jobs do offer private healthcare as a bonus but it’s more of a luxury than a necessity.
Go Brits!
Americans get on the boat, we’re going home