What is a good salary in UK at present?

panthro said:
If you're on some kind of leadership programme or scheme then it's worthwhile. Otherwise I would never recommend staying in the same job long term. I've seen so many companies walk all over their employees because they know they will never leave. They keep them happy by spouting that ice cream trucks and summer parties are just as good as a meaningful pay rise.
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From my perspective (including myself) push overs get walked over.

And as has been mentioned. It's not intelligence. It's confidence.

If you're happy with risk. The rewards are vast for chopping and changing jobs. Especially in this wage inflation cycle.

I barely do any different to what I did 4 years ago. But salary has almost doubled.

(part of that is lucking into an area that had (has?) a skills shortage and WFH opened up opportunity
 
Surprised to hear the Midlands being slated for job opportunities. I moved to the Midlands for work! Granted, that is Birmingham which clearly has better opportunities than smaller midlands population centres.
 
Macky said:
Surprised to hear the Midlands being slated for job opportunities. I moved to the Midlands for work! Granted, that is Birmingham which clearly has better opportunities than smaller midlands population centres.
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It depends on the job. For me, IT wise things were going down hill. Spent most my life working in Birmingham but companies not investing in IT like they once did. So without defaulting to "Oh, I just move to London for a better job." I moved to mainland Europe instead for better job opportunities in IT and its worked out well for me over the past 4 years since I left the UK. Im still trying to learn the local language and its not easy but that will be another skillset I will have in the end.

But on the other hand, my other friend just landed a job 60K plus a year managing cyber security for an organisation in Worcester.
 
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Ocean Breeze said:
Just walking into a £30K job outside of London is not that easy. You generally have to stay with an employer for a good while to achieve that salary or you’re going to have look for jobs based in cities which could be a long distance away..
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All you need is 4-5k to walk into a 50k+ a year job outside of London.

Do your HGV licence and you can walk into a job that pays 50k+ a year pretty much anywhere in the country. You will be sleeping in a cab 4 nights a week and working 60 hours but will easily make 50k+ at most places. Mid 40's on days with no nights out.

Get experience and get those golden egg jobs and can quite easily be on 60k a year on a 40-50 hour week.
 
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adam cool dude said:
All you need is 4-5k to walk into a 50k+ a year job outside of London.

Do your HGV licence and you can walk into a job that pays 50k+ a year pretty much anywhere in the country. You will be sleeping in a cab 4 nights a week and working 60 hours but will easily make 50k+ at most places. Mid 40's on days with no nights out.

Get experience and get those golden egg jobs and can quite easily be on 60k a year on a 40-50 hour week.
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Or better still become a train or tube driver.
Great salary, great holidays, pensions and you get bonus holiday days when you CBA to work.
 
Voltar said:
Or better still become a train or tube driver.
Great salary, great holidays, pensions and you get bonus holiday days when you CBA to work.
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Getting into a train drivers job is incredibly difficult. You ideally need to be walking distance to the depot you apply for. Anything 15+ minutes away and you instantly get thrown in the massive pile of waste applicants.

Then if you pass the test you get put into a talent pool which can take 2 years before you are selected. Then you need to train for 18 months before let out on your own.
 
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adam cool dude said:
All you need is 4-5k to walk into a 50k+ a year job outside of London.

Do your HGV licence and you can walk into a job that pays 50k+ a year pretty much anywhere in the country. You will be sleeping in a cab 4 nights a week and working 60 hours but will easily make 50k+ at most places. Mid 40's on days with no nights out.

Get experience and get those golden egg jobs and can quite easily be on 60k a year on a 40-50 hour week.
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But that's pretty poor imo. a lot of people get hung up on salary but imo the hourly rate is most useful. That 60k for 50 hours is only about 15% more than my 39k salary at 37.5 hours.
 
theone8181 said:
But that's pretty poor imo. a lot of people get hung up on salary but imo the hourly rate is most useful. That 60k for 50 hours is only about 15% more than my 39k salary at 37.5 hours.
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I never said it is great but it is an option for people who want money now. Especially those who moan that high paying jobs (relatively) do not exist. I never said it was easy money because it really isn't BUT it is available to anyone who wants it. Like alluded to above a lot of jobs in industry require brown nosing and waiting your turn which sometimes might not come. I too spent 15 odd years in a corporation having to submit to horrible people above me to eventually get to a mid 40's salary with the stress of managing a whole shift of 50-100 people. Within two years of leaving that job and going driving I get the same money and all I have to worry about is myself. I do "work" more hours but those hours are immeasurably better in quality. It is also offset now that my commute has gone from 35 minutes to 5-10 minutes. In a few years time I can even use my managerial experience to combine with my driving and do my Transport Manager CPC and get on a real decent wage so my previous job experience hasn't all gone to waste.

Also with lorry driving you are not "working" like you would a normal job. I have had instances before where I have worked a 15 hour day before but have spent 7 hours of it on break so my WTD is only 8 hours but paid for 15. If you can make good use of that downtime then it is great.

I start at 5am so am up at 4:15 on the dot and normally finish between 15:00 and 17:00. Agreed it is not for your 9-5 but at the same time I only work 4 days a week so I still only do mid 40's hours average and have 182 days off a year not including holidays. OT is available when I want any time of the year except January-Feb so if I want to supplement my pay further I can easily do so.
 
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adam cool dude said:
I never said it is great but it is an option for people who want money now. Especially those who moan that high paying jobs (relatively) do not exist. I never said it was easy money because it really isn't BUT it is available to anyone who wants it. Like alluded to above a lot of jobs in industry require brown nosing and waiting your turn which sometimes might not come. I too spent 15 odd years in a corporation having to submit to horrible people above me to eventually get to a mid 40's salary with the stress of managing a whole shift of 50-100 people. Within two years of leaving that job and going driving I get the same money and all I have to worry about is myself. I do "work" more hours but those hours are immeasurably better in quality. It is also offset now that my commute has gone from 35 minutes to 5-10 minutes. In a few years time I can even use my managerial experience to combine with my driving and do my Transport Manager CPC and get on a real decent wage so my previous job experience hasn't all gone to waste.

Also with lorry driving you are not "working" like you would a normal job. I have had instances before where I have worked a 15 hour day before but have spent 7 hours of it on break so my WTD is only 8 hours but paid for 15. If you can make good use of that downtime then it is great.

I start at 5am so am up at 4:15 on the dot and normally finish between 15:00 and 17:00. Agreed it is not for your 9-5 but at the same time I only work 4 days a week so I still only do mid 40's hours average and have 182 days off a year not including holidays. OT is available when I want any time of the year except January-Feb so if I want to supplement my pay further I can easily do so.
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So basically on your breaks you're sat at the back of your cab playing Open TTD on Steam Deck as preparation for your Transport Manager CPC? :)
 
bayo000 said:
So basically on your breaks you're sat at the back of your cab playing Open TTD on Steam Deck as preparation for your Transport Manager CPC? :)
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Nintendo Switch mainly but sometimes I take a laptop and play DayZ with hotspot through my phone or if I am lucky and the site has Wifi it is even better :P

I might get a Steam Deck at some point but the pickup and play nature of the switch is what makes it great.
 
adam cool dude said:
Nintendo Switch mainly but sometimes I take a laptop and play DayZ with hotspot through my phone or if I am lucky and the site has Wifi it is even better :P

I might get a Steam Deck at some point but the pickup and play nature of the switch is what makes it great.
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Same with the Deck. You can be back in your game in couple of seconds though if you already invested in Switch then probably not necessary.
 
theone8181 said:
A kid I used to work with decided to pull out his money (from a final salary scheme) for some beer money. Yes he was an idiot with money :rolleyes: .
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Kids these days are so dumb.

The company I work for hired an 18 year old who started on 37k and it would have jumped to 46k after 12 months but his first 3 weeks on the job he was late 1-2 times a week, left early, got caught hiding on his phone etc, didn’t even make it a month.
 
Captain said:
Kids these days are so dumb.

The company I work for hired an 18 year old who started on 37k and it would have jumped to 46k after 12 months but his first 3 weeks on the job he was late 1-2 times a week, left early, got caught hiding on his phone etc, didn’t even make it a month.
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What was their role? Seems like an amazing wage for starter job at 18
 
Yeah he'll be in for a shock when he gets his next job on half that. I guess in your first jobs you don't really know what to expect / how to behave / how good or bad that job is. Looking back now, I put up with way way too much stress in my first job after uni, I just didn't know any better and assumed that work was expected to be terrible unless you were in a vocational job or something.
theone8181 said:
But that's pretty poor imo. a lot of people get hung up on salary but imo the hourly rate is most useful. That 60k for 50 hours is only about 15% more than my 39k salary at 37.5 hours.
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An extension of that is to look at takehome pay per hour excluding costs (commuting etc). At 60k they'll be in the higher income tax bracket for a portion of that earnings so it closes the gap even more.

The most extreme point is probably the £100-125k range where you get absolutely slaughtered financially, as you lose a bunch of benefits like tax free childcare and meanwhile you also lose your tax free allowance meaning the marginal tax rate is effectively 60%. Obviously you can mitigate that by overpaying pension etc but either way it does mean when it comes to actual takehome pay you kind of hit a bit of a plateau around that point. So if someone was to take a 'better' job paying 125k instead of 100k but having to work longer hours for that salary, their effective hourly rate will barely shift, especially if they need childcare.
 
Voltar said:
What was their role? Seems like an amazing wage for starter job at 18
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Just factory work doing ultrasonic inspection, we couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t at least make the effort until he had passed his trial period but no, he never cared.
 
Freefaller said:
www.youtube.com

What Salary Puts You In The Top 10% In The UK

The latest figures are out showing how much people are paid in the UK from full time work. The numbers tell us an interesting story about sector, age and loc...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com

Good video explaining the situation about fiscal drag, inflation and national average wages etc...
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I didn't realise bands were frozen until 2028!
That's some real drag.
 
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malachi said:
Thats why bands should be well......band.

I got stuck in the same mess at my job for 10 years before I left.
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Not really much point pushing for pay rises now im at that point. Especially with the responsibility going up. Would only do it if I could cut down days.
4 days @ 50k vs 5 days @ 60k?
I'll take the 4 days!

50 days off a year for 6k (after tax) sounds like a good deal
 
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413x said:
Not really much point pushing for pay rises now im at that point. Especially with the responsibility going up. Would only do it if I could cut down days.
4 days @ 50k vs 5 days @ 60k?
I'll take the 4 days!

50 days off a year for 6k (after tax) sounds like a good deal
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Except you now have an extra day a week on which to spend your reduced income :P
 
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