Salary Bell Curve by Age

[slinxy]

This has popped into my head recently, mainly as I was approached by a company for a job position and I'm hoping that some of our members may share their experience.

From most of the reports that I've read:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8456/

Average UK salary by age - Occam Investing

This post explores a variety of statistics around salary data in the UK, including the average UK salary by age.As salaries vary depending on the cost of living in each region, I've included a breakdown of the average salaries by age in each region. As there's most variation within London, I've...

occaminvesting.co.uk

etc etc

the average salary for a male in the UK drops after the age of 50, has anyone experience this?

I can understand that once someone is settled down and nested; house paid off, kids grown up and pension pot at a decent level, someone might look at reducing their hours or change their role to a less demanding one, but how common is this? as I'm not at the that age and I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel yet.

or is it a case, that redundancy occurs as most companies tend to trim from the top in positions that are more likely to be filled by older people and 'another' company are less likely to recruit an older person at the same level, that the drive to climb another company's career ladder might not as strong as before.

the reports don't show the reason behind this drop, what percentage is from choice and what percentage is from lack of possibility...

coud this be down to males in that age group being stuck in a role or in a career where their salary is getting out paced by a new fandango role/career path that someone younger may have taken?

I'm not worried about it; if it's inevitable it will happen... I'm just curious why.. and with the higher state retirement age might we see the drop start at a later avarage?

 

[PlacidCasual]

It might be high earning men over 50 can afford to retire early or move to consultancy/self employed driving the wage down. Also ability and willingness to work shifts/overtime reduces. Those are some immediate thoughts.

 

[413x]

Makes sense.
More people retiring will make the average salary go down.

Many people start retiring at 50+

I certainly don't see my salary going much higher. To be honest.. I'd take a salary cut for more time if I could get it.

 

[NickK]

It might be high earning men over 50 can afford to retire early or move to consultancy/self employed driving the wage down. Also ability and willingness to work shifts/overtime reduces. Those are some immediate thoughts.

Actually I think it's driven by the unwillingness for employer to hire 50+. Instead the 50+ then has to drop their salary expectation to make them more attractive.

 

[Lopéz]

My salary crawled up in my twenties, rocketed in my late thirties, and has slowed down again in my mid forties - though I'm not sure any of it has much to do with my age, it feels more industry and economy driven.

 

[Grim5]

the average salary for a male in the UK drops after the age of 50, has anyone experience this?

This is the case pretty much everywhere, in every country

I think the cause of it is life and responsibilities outside of work. Younger people are more hungry for promotion and will work longer hours because they have fewer responsibilities outside of work.

Knowing that this is the case, while you are young take every option presented to you for a higher salary, even if it means changing job every couple years, get your salary as high as you can before mid to late 40s. The only people really experiencing salary increases during or after their 50s are those getting promoted to be CEO/Board Members of companies, aka the 1%

My salary crawled up in my twenties, rocketed in my late thirties, and has slowed down again in my mid forties - though I'm not sure any of it has much to do with my age, it feels more industry and economy driven.

Mine has pretty much tracked with age - in my 20s my salary rocketed but now its slowed down in the 30s. Its because early in my career I received large salary increases just for getting more experience but now I've got so much experience that further growth requires taking on new challenges - aka climbing the management ladder

 

[OspreyO]

...

I think the cause of it is life and responsibilities outside of work. Younger people are more hungry for promotion and will work longer hours because they have fewer responsibilities outside of work.

Knowing that this is the case, while you are young take every option presented to you for a higher salary, even if it means changing job every couple years, get your salary as high as you can before mid to late 40s. The only people really experiencing salary increases during or after their 50s are those getting promoted to be CEO/Board Members of companies, aka the 1%

...

It's not that they are hungrier, it's that most younger do not have the experience to know better when asked to do stupid or busy work so they don't argue about it.

But it is true that generally they have no of commitments. Sports falls away, social life and personal life is undemanding. They aren't looking after kids, older parents, aren't tied to mortgages, loans. No injuries no illness all sorts of things have yet to happen to them.

But it's true that most people don't grow their salary significantly once 40. Most people are pretty much in track to do well by 30. Either running business's or in a fast track career path.

The leadership or earning pryamid gets narrowed as you climb. Each step gets harder and the opportunities becomes fewer. Competition becomes fiercer.

That's just life.

 

[Jim99]

I've seen it with my parents' generation, three examples in IT.

Got to their 50s with a bunch of outdated skills. Very good at what they did, but limited ability to transfer over to a new company because their skills just weren't in huge demand.

They were earning well, so when their employer looked to cut back, they were the most obvious people to chop.

One dropped to 50% of previous salary, another ended up doing a non-technical job at 25% of the previous salary.

I don't think they did much wrong, just got completely blindsided by the company deciding they didn't need them any more and were a bit shocked at what the job market expected of them.

It's not easy to walk into another high-powered role at 50+ unless you've got skills that are being sought.

 

[OspreyO]

The other thing I've seen in companies. It's that people get managed (left) into roles where there is no progression. New hires (younger) get the roles with progression.

At which point if you re-train your always going to last in line for everything. You can move laterally to stay relevant, like to another company that still values long experience or skill-set. Avoid proprietary skillets.

People running business's usually can reset and start a new business, or repurpose an existing business.

 

[NickK]

The other thing I've seen in companies. It's that people get managed (left) into roles where there is no progression. New hires (younger) get the roles with progression.

That is very true - old hands, they often get given the really painful problems to solve that are the mess of the company. The new top end driving roles that have progression then fall to the younger generation who (in an out dated belief) the companies feel will stick around for the next 30 years.

The reality is the younger generation will stick around for 2-3 years on average. After which either (a) their skills atrophy due to the company not investing in education thus contributing performance drops, and, (b) the youngsters hit the top pay bracket and go seeking increases externally.

I remember working for a consultancy for 12 years. It was the first company I joined and there was a define set of boundaries at 3 years, 5 years and then 7-10 years. I'd been around for so long I was on first name terms with the board members. I ran the commerical-technical on three global products, sorted out the mess that off piste sales guys made. Yet that didn't stop board politics from two merged companies from making redundancies that targeted the UK. My pay had stalled too but my responsibilities were that of a mini-CTO. A bit of a sap and inexperienced in business (both parents in the education sector).

At which point if you re-train your always going to last in line for everything. You can move laterally to stay relevant, like to another company that still values long experience or skill-set. Avoid proprietary skillets.

People running business's usually can reset and start a new business, or repurpose an existing business.

Once you get beyond 30, it's really up to you as an individual to start analysing the market and aligning your skills and training. Passivity won't cut it as the companies will simply fire'n'hire rather than invest in training. The only way that doesn't happen is if there's a relationship with long standing board members and the individual is being mentored towards the board over the next 5 years in a play to gain more power by one or more directors.

The majority of over 50s end up starting companies and then going between opportunities for this reason, following the money and adapting quickly.

It's funny - I got a contract once, the first question was "do you know this is a C-level position", my response "yes" (no..). Simple role - fix the mess no questions asked, free todo anything, you drive. I excelled at it (solved in 4 months, confirmed over next 2 months), the salary was 4x my usual salary (that was post-tax and inside IR35!). They wanted to renew but I knew their divisional budget was getting tight, I had a re-mortgaging coming up, and a new perm role came in that took the next 1.5 years before they decided reshuffle the entire group making everyone redundant.

So although I know the 50+ board increases, the decreases also hit by the double whammy of risk of being first out the door when the redundancies come in. Over 50s need a larger saving pool (or face the fun of JSA) to span the longer gaps with dependencies too (usually). Although that's a personal requirement, it's driven by the external environment rather (perhaps a result of their action).

 

[OspreyO]

Where I am there was a change in management and there's been a subtle but definite push to replace older staff with younger staff. Problem is they aren't willing to match salaries so the people coming in are often lesser skilled.

The new staff especially in higher roles do not like anyone disagreeing with them. So they sideline the older staff if they aren't yes men. What this has resulted in is older staff protecting their roles, and not transferring domain knowledge.

It's caused a massive knowledge loss as people leave. Because they never did a skills transfer and new people aren't able to do the job.

We've seen it across the IT sector new management cost cutting, cutting experienced staff, or out to sourcing then unable to recover quickly when something critical breaks.

In our place I think the top management were hoping AI might fill in the gaps. But a lot of this domain knowledge isn't documented or is obscure. So AI produces poor results when I've tried it.

 

[OspreyO]

When I'm looking at my options trying to push past the ageism trying to move upwards seems to have diminishing returns for a lot of effort. It would seem to make more sense to move somewhere else or get a side gig going.

For example I could earn more from a rental property than I could my likely salary increases
Over the next 10 yrs.

 

[NickK]

In our place I think the top management were hoping AI might fill in the gaps. But a lot of this domain knowledge isn't documented or is obscure. So AI produces poor results when I've tried it.

There does seem to be the belief that all the AI need todo is read the documentation, correlate all the information to get up to speed. Reality is completely different. Youngsters+AI then don't understand, can't compensate or recreate. The 'my first executive/leadership role' approach then is to have everyone a yes minion and believe that's the state of the world, if not, blame them. They don't have the tools or confidence to know how to handle it.

 

[NickK]

It would seem to make more sense to move somewhere else or get a side gig going.

For example I could earn more from a rental property than I could my likely salary increases
Over the next 10 yrs.

Yes, most of the upcoming over the last 10 years have managed side gigs. I remember one contractor (older than me) who had been contracting for years that had 27 rental properties. He recently decided to jack in the contracting and open a guest house with his wife by the sea down in the south west.

There's so much indecision over the last two years with boards with AI and investments. This is clearing and most have just decided to deal with the risk and problems with a view to emerging as a pack leader. The AI companies are doing a nVidia, selling the tools but not worrying about the risk or end result to make as much money as possible before their target market canabalism comes home to roost.

 

[413x]

My salary crawled up in my twenties, rocketed in my late thirties, and has slowed down again in my mid forties - though I'm not sure any of it has much to do with my age, it feels more industry and economy driven.

Mine for this. Not dramatically as I'm not a super high earner.

Really slow in 20s... Due to my apathy.
Shot up in my 30s. Due to market conditions.

I'm near 40 and I expect a massive decline or to have to change career/life or even my entire future based on salary/career decline due to automation.


Wanted to move house this year due to not liking the area but jobs are horrendous and WFH seems harder to get. And perm roles don't really exist. Difficult to navigate. And big commitments (ie moving) are really difficult.

So I expect a salary decline in my 40s. Probably significant enough to change all plans.

 

[413x]

When I'm looking at my options trying to push past the ageism trying to move upwards seems to have diminishing returns for a lot of effort. It would seem to make more sense to move somewhere else or get a side gig going.

For example I could earn more from a rental property than I could my likely salary increases
Over the next 10 yrs.

If you take AI out and assume the carer progression + salary increases etc I'd be expecting to top out soon.

The reward:effort ratio starts to fall away unless you get above all the middle management area I feel. I've seen a fair few of my bosses lives and I don't really want that.

It just never seemed like the stress and salary were worth it.

 

[ODuffer]

My boss, one year older than me (at 56), has just dropped down to a 3 day week. I could see myself doing the same when he retires completely.

 

[mid_gen]

If you want to get to the most senior roles in larger companies, where the big salaries are, then you need to maintain a consistent upwards trajectory. In an industry like finance you'll get your shot to see if you've got what it takes to go further, but if you don't take it for whatever reason and are just happy to not progress then you'll just get overtaken in time by younger, more hungry, more ambitious people. Just the way of things, if you want to chase the big salaries, you gotta work for it. Personally the money side has never interested me that much although I do enjoy leadership roles, I prefer spending my time doing things that aren't work, so it's not a priority for me to chase the big money.

 

[OspreyO]

I don't think it's that simple. Work harder get promoted. Don't work hard don't get promoted.

A lot of the managers in our place are very good at playing corporate politics. They spend more time at that than actually working. At least 50% of them are utterly abysmal workers. They avoided any difficult or time consuming work before they were managers. Which explains why so many are abysmal managers. The best managers (not always) usually have a good background in their domain.

I doubt any of makes a difference once they get older. They'll hit the same ageism hurdles.

 

[Hades]

Yes I have experienced this. I was made redundant at 53 years old. Since then I've been working for a smaller company on a lower salary. Despite having very extensive experience in my field, and working for some global companies, I found getting a job after 50 was much harder than when I was younger.

Last year, at mid to high 50's my wife was also made redundant. She's not been able to get anything at all, so is effectively retired. I am aiming to retire in a few years at about 60 as, frankly, I'm exhausted.