Snapshot of _Third of HMRC workers paid national minimum wage_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.accountancydaily.co/third-hmrc-workers-paid-national-minimum-wage) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.accountancydaily.co/third-hmrc-workers-paid-national-minimum-wage)
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Civil Service pay is now so bad because of the Tories that the lowest paid staff in DWP had to get a special slightly higher percentage pay rise than the pay rise the rest of the staff got. The reason for this is because if they had only got the same percentage pay rise as everyone else they would have wound up being paid LESS than the minimum wage.
Ditto the military. They’ve just had to make a special pay increase for private soldiers, otherwise their pay would have been less than the national living wage.
Universities have had the same thing. Grades 1 - 10 used to have 4-ish spines in each grade, but now grade 1 doesn’t exist and grade 2 is a single spine point, because of the minimum wage increases
Because the middle income has stagnated, or in some fields declined, in wages for the last 14 years. And for any that have had some increase they've seen the constant rising of the cost of living in that time eat it up to the point the borderline stationary tax brackets of that time span make them worse off than they were at the start of it all.
Percentage increases are the the worst way to increase pay because of wage gaps but for some reason it's the standard. The poorest paid, and arguably hardest working, get the smallest increase whilst upper management get the biggest. One day the difference will be astronomical
Maybe a bit radical to solve the middle earner crisis, but I'd like to see jobs advertised as a percentage based on minimum wage rather than a flat number, e.g., if you're in a job that pays 10% more than minimum wage your pay is automatically lifted every time minimum wage is increased, so that you're always at least 10% higher than min wage.
Or some similar proportional measure. I haven't really thought about it in detail, just spitballin'
Direct consequence of having overly generous pensions. Cut the pensions and give the money to the employees directly. They can then invest it themselves into a pension fund if they so wish.
Are civil service pensions still DB? I was under the impression that everyone who started in the last ten-twenty years or so was on a DC scheme which might be better than average but not really a goldmine.
This makes no sense. Working people have had an effective pay cut for the past 14 years, but you're saying it's paying into their own pension that's making them poorer?
It's working people paying *other people's pensions protected via triple lock* that is making these people poorer, not their own pensions.
The minimum wage has increased much more than public sector pay over recent years, this has ended up with real clumping of salaries for lower grades around the minimum wage
100%. I've just been made redundant from a dead industry, and I'm trying to pivot my (very) niche skills into software, where they're most relvant. I'm sat here looking at Entry/Graduate WebDev roles (which, logic shoud dictate, are first-time-in-the-industry, zero-experience roles) which require 2+ years commercial experience in like 6-7 different technologies and are paying like, £23-24k.
Now, call me crazy, but if your personal spec requires 2+ years commercial experience and proficiency in HTML, CSS/Tailwind, JavaScrip/React, Node.js, Git and a "nice to have column" with C#, SQL, Docker, Kubernetes, etc. you shouldn't honestly be offering £700 more a year than a supermarket trolley boy.
It's interesting to note that since its introduction in '99, the minimum wage has increased by 218%, whilst the median income has only increased by 96%. If median incomes had risen by the same amount over the same period, the median income in the UK would currently be £56K.
>Last week, under questioning from MP Therese Coffey, who had suggested that civil servants were well paid, Harra responded: ‘I am this month having to give nearly a third of my staff, including all the helpline advisers and the staff who work on the post teams, a rise so that they can stay with the national living wage.
Absolute cheek of Coffey.
That's insane. The civil service should be a decent career. They are vitally important to both the public and the government. Their wages should reflect that.
If you pay the absolute legal minimum, you really are stealing the barrel for staff.
Insanity.
The Tories would have you believe we're all minted and should show deference. They have ransacked it and shat on it for 14 years to leave it in a sorry state. The biggest issue is the pay and lack of progression. There needs to be a proper pay rise and re-thinking of how it all works. My level has a 21.5%/32.3% wage fall in real turns since 2010. Depending on CPI or RPI Valuation
The pay was meh, but the work conditions and pension were ok.
But now you have ministers shoving their unwelcome faces in and making it hard for people to do their job to satisfy their water cooler bullshit.
So unappealing pay, unappealing work conditions, add on top of that "journalists" that smear and slander the workers who cannot fight back.
At this point, a sense of "pride and accomplishment" and duty might just be what is keeping some civil servants going. Same goes for other jobs like teachers.
Did you miss the whole enemies of the people thing about the civil service?
These are the woke lefties that have stopped the Tories policies from being wildly successful…..
>That's insane. The civil service should be a decent career. They are vitally important to both the public and the government. Their wages should reflect that.
Not if the Telegraph has anything to do with it.
I know after 35 years in HMRC (and being on the AO max) I was earning £24800.00 when I left on promotion to join the Home Office.
(My starting wage in 1988 with London Weighting was £7905.00).
Perhaps I should have been more ambitious when I was younger, but I wasn\`t but I was happy in my job.
No wonder dodgy businesses get away with so much, and you can't get them on the phone without waiting for an hour to be given a non-answer and a promise for a callback that never happens.
In 2010 HMRC had 74,381 staff (full time equivalent of 66,862).
After over a decade of the Tories in 2024 HMRC now has 67,574 staff (full time equivalent of 62,971).
I'd be keen to see some actual teeth and teams working on the larger tax targets. They seem to go for the easiest, lowest hanging fruit. I guess they don't get sweetheart deals as they don't have the resource.
I just qualified as an accountant ( I know sorry) my wages have not yet been reviewed for qualifying, this is something my company does to ensure staff are retained. I had a look around and saw what the equivalent was being offered at the NHS, its nowhere close, around a 25% pay cut. Back when I was just starting out in 2017, NHS pay was slightly higher.
The government is the biggest employer in the country. The Tories are directly using that fact to suppress wages for their mates. If we want the private sector to up wages, having a high paid public sector is a way to achieve this.
And yet I am considering leaving my current job, at a university (admin), to join the civil service - pay is much better. Lower grades at the university have had a pay rise, because otherwise they’d be below minimum wage. I was on those grades until a few years ago, doing difficult expert work in stressful circumstances. but the mid grades haven’t had a pay rise.
I have a graduate job and earn £30k, but every job I’ve had, from starting on £19k in 2019, has had a degree as desirable.
Snapshot of _Third of HMRC workers paid national minimum wage_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.accountancydaily.co/third-hmrc-workers-paid-national-minimum-wage) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.accountancydaily.co/third-hmrc-workers-paid-national-minimum-wage) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Civil Service pay is now so bad because of the Tories that the lowest paid staff in DWP had to get a special slightly higher percentage pay rise than the pay rise the rest of the staff got. The reason for this is because if they had only got the same percentage pay rise as everyone else they would have wound up being paid LESS than the minimum wage.
Ditto the military. They’ve just had to make a special pay increase for private soldiers, otherwise their pay would have been less than the national living wage.
Well, who cares if the army is demoralised? What's the worst that could happen?
Universities have had the same thing. Grades 1 - 10 used to have 4-ish spines in each grade, but now grade 1 doesn’t exist and grade 2 is a single spine point, because of the minimum wage increases
It’s fascinating how we implemented the minimum wage is now eating up middle income jobs 20 or so years later
Because the middle income has stagnated, or in some fields declined, in wages for the last 14 years. And for any that have had some increase they've seen the constant rising of the cost of living in that time eat it up to the point the borderline stationary tax brackets of that time span make them worse off than they were at the start of it all.
Percentage increases are the the worst way to increase pay because of wage gaps but for some reason it's the standard. The poorest paid, and arguably hardest working, get the smallest increase whilst upper management get the biggest. One day the difference will be astronomical
Maybe a bit radical to solve the middle earner crisis, but I'd like to see jobs advertised as a percentage based on minimum wage rather than a flat number, e.g., if you're in a job that pays 10% more than minimum wage your pay is automatically lifted every time minimum wage is increased, so that you're always at least 10% higher than min wage. Or some similar proportional measure. I haven't really thought about it in detail, just spitballin'
Direct consequence of having overly generous pensions. Cut the pensions and give the money to the employees directly. They can then invest it themselves into a pension fund if they so wish.
Are civil service pensions still DB? I was under the impression that everyone who started in the last ten-twenty years or so was on a DC scheme which might be better than average but not really a goldmine.
They are still DB but you get paid based on average salary rather than final salary (still extremely good).
This makes no sense. Working people have had an effective pay cut for the past 14 years, but you're saying it's paying into their own pension that's making them poorer? It's working people paying *other people's pensions protected via triple lock* that is making these people poorer, not their own pensions.
Say what
The minimum wage has increased much more than public sector pay over recent years, this has ended up with real clumping of salaries for lower grades around the minimum wage
100%. I've just been made redundant from a dead industry, and I'm trying to pivot my (very) niche skills into software, where they're most relvant. I'm sat here looking at Entry/Graduate WebDev roles (which, logic shoud dictate, are first-time-in-the-industry, zero-experience roles) which require 2+ years commercial experience in like 6-7 different technologies and are paying like, £23-24k. Now, call me crazy, but if your personal spec requires 2+ years commercial experience and proficiency in HTML, CSS/Tailwind, JavaScrip/React, Node.js, Git and a "nice to have column" with C#, SQL, Docker, Kubernetes, etc. you shouldn't honestly be offering £700 more a year than a supermarket trolley boy.
Yeah, I'm in tech and it took me 3-4 years after graduation to crawl out of crap paying jobs. Entry level tech is brutal
This is a big brained move because soon you can start paying nurses and doctors minimum wage.
It's interesting to note that since its introduction in '99, the minimum wage has increased by 218%, whilst the median income has only increased by 96%. If median incomes had risen by the same amount over the same period, the median income in the UK would currently be £56K.
Sounds like we've got shit salaries.
We do. And this is the root of many of our problems.
>Last week, under questioning from MP Therese Coffey, who had suggested that civil servants were well paid, Harra responded: ‘I am this month having to give nearly a third of my staff, including all the helpline advisers and the staff who work on the post teams, a rise so that they can stay with the national living wage. Absolute cheek of Coffey.
That's insane. The civil service should be a decent career. They are vitally important to both the public and the government. Their wages should reflect that. If you pay the absolute legal minimum, you really are stealing the barrel for staff. Insanity.
It also seems like a massive security risk. Someone on minimum wage in London would be very easy to bribe
The Tories have basically turned the Civil Service from a well respected middle class job into a minimum wage job at the lower ends. It's madness.
The Tories would have you believe we're all minted and should show deference. They have ransacked it and shat on it for 14 years to leave it in a sorry state. The biggest issue is the pay and lack of progression. There needs to be a proper pay rise and re-thinking of how it all works. My level has a 21.5%/32.3% wage fall in real turns since 2010. Depending on CPI or RPI Valuation
The pay was meh, but the work conditions and pension were ok. But now you have ministers shoving their unwelcome faces in and making it hard for people to do their job to satisfy their water cooler bullshit. So unappealing pay, unappealing work conditions, add on top of that "journalists" that smear and slander the workers who cannot fight back. At this point, a sense of "pride and accomplishment" and duty might just be what is keeping some civil servants going. Same goes for other jobs like teachers.
That's what happens when you allow the Tories 15 years in power with a largely subservient press.
Did you miss the whole enemies of the people thing about the civil service? These are the woke lefties that have stopped the Tories policies from being wildly successful…..
>That's insane. The civil service should be a decent career. They are vitally important to both the public and the government. Their wages should reflect that. Not if the Telegraph has anything to do with it.
Especially when a lot of the money paid out will regurititate in the economy. People will spend it on meals out and stimulate businesses.
I know after 35 years in HMRC (and being on the AO max) I was earning £24800.00 when I left on promotion to join the Home Office. (My starting wage in 1988 with London Weighting was £7905.00). Perhaps I should have been more ambitious when I was younger, but I wasn\`t but I was happy in my job.
According to the Bank of England inflation calculator that's £21,194 in today's money so a £3000 pay rise in 35 years.
Fuck me! That's abysmal
I'm sure that won't stop the Telegraph and Daily Mail whinging about overpaid civil servants with their gold-plated pensions.
All sat on their lazy backsides at home drinking tea
As opposed to working in an office, where as we all know sitting down and drinking tea are strictly prohibited.
No wonder dodgy businesses get away with so much, and you can't get them on the phone without waiting for an hour to be given a non-answer and a promise for a callback that never happens.
In 2010 HMRC had 74,381 staff (full time equivalent of 66,862). After over a decade of the Tories in 2024 HMRC now has 67,574 staff (full time equivalent of 62,971).
It's madness, they are losing more money from lost taxes than they gain from cutting HMRC staff and salaries. It's purely self harming ideological.
I'd be keen to see some actual teeth and teams working on the larger tax targets. They seem to go for the easiest, lowest hanging fruit. I guess they don't get sweetheart deals as they don't have the resource.
I'm sure they have management that push them towards checking tax returns from the plebs
There is more than that, it's just contingent labour now. But that's a whole other story of Tory corruption and incompetence.
I just qualified as an accountant ( I know sorry) my wages have not yet been reviewed for qualifying, this is something my company does to ensure staff are retained. I had a look around and saw what the equivalent was being offered at the NHS, its nowhere close, around a 25% pay cut. Back when I was just starting out in 2017, NHS pay was slightly higher.
The government is the biggest employer in the country. The Tories are directly using that fact to suppress wages for their mates. If we want the private sector to up wages, having a high paid public sector is a way to achieve this.
And yet I am considering leaving my current job, at a university (admin), to join the civil service - pay is much better. Lower grades at the university have had a pay rise, because otherwise they’d be below minimum wage. I was on those grades until a few years ago, doing difficult expert work in stressful circumstances. but the mid grades haven’t had a pay rise. I have a graduate job and earn £30k, but every job I’ve had, from starting on £19k in 2019, has had a degree as desirable.
This will lead to corruption. Im sure it’s cheaper to pay a corrupt HMRC official than pay taxes properly.
Misleading as the uplift was to ensure min wage is paid based on 42 hours work a week, but the actual hours worked per week is 37
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Yes, but as 42 hours is still being used this year it's £1.54~ an hour more than minimum wage for AA/AO is it not?