Lack of well paying jobs?

westv

DKLS wrote: »

I only say it the way I see it in my sector.
Its all down to skillset, if your skills are in demand, the rewards are there.
If your skills aren't in demand, learn new ones

I presume we'll have to guess or do a forum search to know what this "sector" is.

garston_T

something really dirty and seedy for him not to want to tell us i'd wager.

donquine

lucylucky wrote: »

"This may differ in London but certainly up here in the North of the UK its shocking."

The oil industry has a lot of not badly paid support jobs.

Or do you mean further north than Aberdeen area?

I assumed the poster meant England.

Oil jobs are well paid, but the cost of living in Aberdeen is high. Our housing market never even wobbled and our buses, I seem to recall, are among the most expensive in the UK. Petrol is pretty pricey too, considering we're the oil capital.

Salary is all relative to the area you live in. The north of England is cheap, of course you can't compare salaries from there to London weighted ones (which are factored into national averages).

[Deleted User]

Wait, did there use to be well-paid jobs that didn't need decent skills?

briona

slugger09 wrote: »

This may differ in London but certainly up here in the North of the UK its shocking. You will have your graduate jobs, I can't comment on them as I'm not a graduate but certainly for non skill jobs such as shop work/factory work/warehouse work its all min wage. I've been looking to switch employers for some time now, My £14k is rubbish considering the national average is £25K or so but around here I am extremely lucky to be getting £7 per hour, there is virtually no one paying that and even my current employer pays new employees min wage at £5.80 or so.

I don't know whether its the recession or migrant workers but it didn't used to be like this, in fact it used to be a rule that the crappier the job the better the pay to entice people to do it, not the case now.

Is it the same in your area?

The 'national average' is bumped up by London salaries (particularly the far from average salaries of the high earners). If you removed London entirely from the equation, the national average would be a lot lower than 25K.

I live in Wales and I have never earned 25K here. That said 16K-ish in Wales was manageable because my cost of living was low, e.g., I rented a room in a shared house for £180pcm. Granted the house did not look like it had fallen out of the IKEA catalogue but the savings I made living there were huge, and my salary certainly went a lot further than if I had insisted on living in a one-bed self-contained flat.

I think it's not so much salaries that are the problem but people's expectations. No-one NEEDS a huge salary, they just need to learn to manage money better – accept that they can't have everything right now and stop saddling themselves with ridiculous debt.

Briona

[Deleted User]

briona wrote: »

No-one NEEDS a huge salary, they just need to learn to manage money better

Unless you live somewhere that has astronomical house prices and you want to buy a family home.. I can't see me getting a 3 bed in my area house until i'm earning at least 45k. Sad thing is, i don't even see that as a 'huge' salary in London

TaxPayingMug

briona wrote: »

The 'national average' is bumped up by London salaries (particularly the far from average salaries of the high earners). If you removed London entirely from the equation, the national average would be a lot lower than 25K.

I live in Wales and I have never earned 25K here. That said 16K-ish in Wales was manageable because my cost of living was low, e.g., I rented a room in a shared house for £180pcm. Granted the house did not look like it had fallen out of the IKEA catalogue but the savings I made living there were huge, and my salary certainly went a lot further than if I had insisted on living in a one-bed self-contained flat.

I think it's not so much salaries that are the problem but people's expectations. No-one NEEDS a huge salary, they just need to learn to manage money better – accept that they can't have everything right now and stop saddling themselves with ridiculous debt.

Briona

Well i lived in South Wales at the end of the 90's and beginning of the 2000's and never earnt less than £33K.

If you are qualified, skilled, and in a sector which is requiring these skills you are worth the extra.

If you are going for a job lacking in any of those three, you get less....easy.

Maybe you just aren't as desireable in the job market as you think you are.

No-one NEEDS a huge salary

What are you on about?

missworks2jobs

A lot of jobs i'm looking at seem well paid but then the magic words "pro-rata" show up - and further investigation shows its only 12hours a week or a job share which is no good for someone who needs the money and hours rather than the time.

I have a business degree with honours, I work in the construction industry in job 1, have 10 years experience and qualifications coming out of my ears (not to sound big headed but i've done lots of on the job courses & part-time qualifications to try make myself more flexible). I have 11 good GCSEs, 3 A levels, an A/S level, an advanced GNVQ, my degree, i'm first aid trained, have my asbestos awareness, cscs site visitor (another health & safety qualification), food hygiene & personal licence (for selling alcohol) from when I did restaurant/bar work, ECDL (computer course similar to CLAIT), Sage accounts certificates, along with millions of customer service & health and safety at work and have even done things like jewellery making & cake decoration classes for job no2 (craft store).

I get £16k in job 1 (because that's what the last post-holder got and she was well paid cos was the boss' daughter) and job 2 works out about another £2k as its only part time and min wage. I think i'm incredibly well paid and very lucky that for now it's permanent and quite secure.

BUT all the admin & lower managerial jobs are really badly paid anything from £8k to about £14k the average hovering around £12k, the best way i've discovered is to just get a second job to make up the wage (hence miss works 2 jobs). There is so much competition that you need qualifications & experience and need to be willing to work all hours just to get a foot in the door, most people I know are vastly over qualified for their jobs but at the moment beggars cant be choosers.

My friend's fiance was made redundant over a year ago (mortgage advisor), has vast experience & glowing reference from his old employee, good qualifications including a degree in financial management (or something similar - I forget the proper title) an is currently working 11pm-7am 3 days a week in a 24hour garage for minimum wage....because thats all he can get, any money is better than none.

Another school friend is a qualified teacher, CRB checked, experience running kids clubs & has also been a full time nanny, who has experience & qualifications in special needs, sign language, first aid & qualified to teach languages, a psychology degree as well as primary teaching degree, and she's currently struggling to find supply work as a teaching assistant. We're all in the North East region.

One of the girls I went to school with has a degree in psychology - couldn't get a job with that, so re-trained as a dental nurse, couldn't get a decent paid job with that, so re-trained again as a childrens nurse. 14 years after leaving school, working multiple jobs and retraining, she's only now finally earning a decent living (about 16k plus overtime for nightshifts etc) and she's still living with parents as cant afford her own home rented or otherwise.

DKLS

westv wrote: »

I presume we'll have to guess or do a forum search to know what this "sector" is.

Medical IT or Informatics as its now known.

[Deleted User]

DKLS wrote: »

Medical IT or Informatics as its now known.

me too! Small world it is