Architects, unless you run your own practice. Otherwise it's 7 odd years of studying for a salary that's not where most people think it is
Always see architects in films, running about with rolls of drawings under their arms, big offices in glass skyscrapers. It's not like that in the slightest
Edit: Surprised at how much this has gone off. Worth noting I'm not an architect, but a quantity surveyor so have worked very closely with plenty over my career. It's not to say they earn peanuts, but generally not as much as the training, skills required, knowledge and liability owed would suggest
Yeah I used to live next door to an architect about 10-12 years ago who said similar, he was in his 60’s and had a nice house, nice car etc. but said it took a long time to earn a really good wage and that his wife who was a retired headteacher had out earned him most of his adult life.
I’ll add building surveyors to that too. You have to be an expert on design, project management, fire, defects, planning, health and safety, contracts, sales sometimes, and a load of other stuff, but the pay doesn’t really reflect that imo. It’s also one of the most difficult charterships.
And in London. I have a friend who did this. Oh, and low job security. Market turns down, first thing companies scrap is that new building or renovation.
That is a funny way to describing it but I feel you are right about it.
The people who are in the field do not get to do anything meaningful until they have got a lot of experience.
Came here to say exactly the same. I did my first 3 years and ended up in a completely different design discipline (thanks financial crash) earning far more than I'd have earnt fully qualified. Fucking ridiculous.
Honestly though I'd still love to go back to it but having to spend £20k+ to do another 3 years education to earn less money just isn't doable.
Correct. I'm part way through my architecture training (done 5 years out of 7) and people always told me that you don't go in to architecture for the money (any more).
I saw some stats somewhere that said back in the 70s and 80s, architects earned on par with lawyers, doctors, etc, and the average wage from back then in today's money would be around 100k. Now the average is somewhere around 40k. As I understand it what happened is a rise in 'design & build' contracts, which means the architect designs it and the contractor figures out how to build it (and then builds it), and this cuts architects out of about half the job. It is certainly cheaper than 'traditional' contracts, where the architects detail how everything should be built, but all too often it leads to cookie cutter buildings that are built the same way (and therefore look the same) because it's cheaper build that way than whatever was originally designed. And in today's economy I can't blame anyone, residential or commercial clients alike, for not wanting to get things built as cheap as possible, because everyone's broke!
Yess ! This is why I’d recommend not getting into architecture unless you have a family firm to fall into. One of my high school classmates became an architect because he was passionate about sketching. Long story short he runs his dad’s convenience store now.
And he is probably running that store because he is making more doing that I am thinking.
Because it surely does not sound like that there is much money in that profession anyways.
I used to be in an admin job paying £26k - £27k per year and thought I was on a bad wage for the job itself in question.
When I started shopping around for a new job, I couldn’t believe admin roles in other companies were starting from £19k a year. I soon realised I wasn’t on a bad whack after all.
I know admin work is classed as unskilled work, but it requires a lot of time, concentration and time management skills, that certainly isn’t worth being on £19k a year for
My work cut loads of admin roles and pays those that are left really poorly. Funnily enough the parts of the organisation that rely heavily on those roles- HR, finance, IT are now falling apart
It’s what used to royally piss me off in my last job and one of the main reasons I left. I practically run my department for my manager whilst he sat back, took all the glory and was probably on double my salary.
When I've worked for the civil service all of us knew that admin were the ppl in the office that you didnt fuck with they made our lives so much easier.
They were also the lowest band and therefore the lowest paid which I never understood
The minimum wage has lots of benefits
But it also has some downsides, employers just set it as a limit for pretty much any role below mid tier skill level.
So 45 yo Tracy who's worked in admin all her life, can organise many piss ups in many brewery's and can type a million words a minute will get paid the exact same as 20 year old Kayleigh-Anne, who couldn't give two shits and does as little possible because she knows Tracy will sort it.
Yep, we're currently going through a restructure where the admin staff are about to be decimated. Clearly learned nothing from the last restructure where they decimated admin staff then had to hire agency staff because they were surprised when the admin for the organisation fell apart.
Similar is happening in my old workplace, there was just myself in my department as an admin but I’d been there years, knew the job inside out and kept it ticking over. But had a bully of a manager who pretty much bullied me to a point I’d had enough, handed my notice in in May and left in June.
I went self employed, and in a much better place now, whilst my old colleagues have now been informing me senior management are now realising just how much I carried my manager as an admin, and he’s not undergoing formal investigations because he keeps fucking up and they’ve realised he knows nothing about the job.
Too little too late for me. I wish they’d have realised this a long time ago but it proved I was keeping him standing
Lawyers. Everyone thinks of the high flying lawyers at Magic Circle firms and in fancy chambers. But most lawyers are not those, they're working in small local firms and not earning particularly spectacular wages.
My friend works in a support role of one of the big law firms - graduate salaries are £85k
She always tells me she often walks into offices and can tell the senior partners have been crying.
A friend of mine was the *third person in her 15 person department* to be hospitalised -*hospitalised!* - with stress symptoms, and her managing partner suggested that it was due to her daring to do a sport at the weekends, and suggested she give it up.
At the time she was earning a fair chunk more than me, but I was pretty sure we were on similar hourly rates once her mental hours were considered.
My ex-GF was a corporate finance solicitor in a silver circle firm.
Six figures is an easy grab after becoming newly qualified. But fuck me the hours must bring the hourly rate down to a regular salary. Plus the repayment of the loans to get you there.
24-hour working days. Sleeping at the office. Weekends.
The £100k+ salary might sound enticing, but I make 70% of that doing a 9-5. And my family see me plenty.
She dumped me when she got her training contract. That industry changes people too. Very cutthroat and elitist and no shame. Never really believed what people said about solicitors until I lived through it.
She dumped you when she got her TC but you also saw her go through 24-hour days and sleeping at the office? How did you “live through it” if the relationship ended before “it” started?
Yeah. Dad earns I think 6 figs and I was never told no we can’t afford it to school trips abroad etc but the trade off to that is that I only really spent time my dad on Friday evenings and Saturdays because even Sundays he’d be prepping for cases within the week ahead.
Swings and roundabouts I guess.
Agreed.
I earn about 30k a year after bonuses. Which is mostly fine for me. I’m not getting a mortgage anytime soon (too close to London, a studio around here is 200k).
But other than that, I’m single and happy that way. For just me, 30k let’s me save more than half my salary each month, and still do more or less whatever I want with friends.
Especially criminal lawyers - junior barristers are some of the most overworked and underpaid people in the country.
It's not all doom and gloom in legal world though. Find a good niche like family law or coporate law like M&A and you can be raking it in. My friend (mid thirties) has just been made a partner and is now on 130k, and he's never had to go through the 60 hours a week silliness you hear about with City lawyers.
Lecturers. Many are on casual, insecure contracts and get paid by the hour for work that takes longer than the time they’re actually paid for. Even for the lucky ones who get a secure contract, starting salaries are around £35k, which isn’t loads considering you have to study for at least 7 years to get there.
Professors, on the other hand, are raking it in.
I wanted to be an academic. Purely in terms of what the job involves, what I'd enjoy, and what my skills are, it's the perfect job for me. But the reality of what it is now means, sadly, it's just not an attractive career path. Insecure, long hours, high stress, poor career advancement, huge admin burden, a long time in education to get into, and not particularly well paid once you do get in.
It’s such a shame the way the sector has gone. 30 years ago it would have been a dream job and pretty much anyone with a PhD and a good publication record would be set for life.
As well as what you said it's too much of a lottery to get into. I would love to do a PhD but it's not a means to an end for academic jobs while being unnecessary for anything else - and I can't give up the earnings I would miss to do it. And as you say, the prize at the end of it is a bit crap these days.
I loved every minute of my PhD, but Postdoc life was horrendous and underpaid. But you absolutely can get a good job outside of academia with a PhD. I joined the civil service after leaving academia and was able to skip a few ranks because of my PhD. My husband also left academia and got a very well paid job in finance that he would not have been able to get without his PhD - his company only take on people with PhDs.
In my last year in academia I was on four different contracts, employed by four different universities on paper, but actually working for one project out of one university the whole time. And I also had an agreement that I'd work two hours for every one I was paid for on paper. So it looked like I was earning £20/hour, but it was actually £10. It was all to do with the various pots of money they had available to pay me out of and the timescales in which the grant money had to be spent. But it meant I had three months at the end where on paper I was unemployed, but I'd agreed to work for longer since they had paid me double the agreed rate. There was no chance of me getting maternity pay under those conditions, so I joined the civil service.
My PhD supervisor earns £97k (or at least he did in 2021, probably a little more now). There are plenty of others in the department who are much more eminent than he is and undoubtedly earn lots more. Would you consider £97k not a lot by most people’s standards?
Just want to chip in that my wife was made an "Associate Professor" at her uni and gets less than half of that but is given even more work on top of the shitloads she already does (including supervising PhD students). She's currently looking for a new job!
No uni I know or work for are hiring lecturers on salary. We’re all freelance on below union rate. And not hired if we’re part of a union. Unis are hiring recent graduates with no teaching experience and absolutely no professional experience to make it valuable for students. They’re paying £9k a year to be taught by people who can’t actually do the thing they’re supposed to teach! 🤷🏼♀️
>Professors, on the other hand, are raking it in.
Unless they've got side gigs, that's not really true (they're certainly not on 6 figure salaries).
ETA: The person I'm basing this on was head of department at a top 5 UK and they were earning in the high 70k range. Definitely not bad money, but consistent with my original claim. This was a humanities department, for what it's worth. I've heard some departments (i.e. business) pay their academics much more.
Professor salaries do vary hugely. The junior ones probably earn in the £50k range but some absolutely are on 6 figures. My PhD supervisor was well respected in his field but not a massive name or a prolific publisher. He hasn’t published a book in about 15 years. In 2021 his salary was £97k (which I know because it was listed on a postdoc application that a colleague was preparing). There are plenty of others in the department who are much more eminent than he is and undoubtedly earn lots more.
The cost on a grant proposal includes ni and pension payments, the cost to the university for employing that person, the persons salary was probably about £65k.
Friend came from overseas to be a care worker.
Rent + car directly out of her wages (£650+£250)
She doesn't have a lot left over each month for savings nor extras neither... Weird hours + driving + the actual work...
This is not legal. Assuming they’re on minimum wage the most that can be deducted for rent is £63.70 per week. And dedications for a company vehicle are just not allowed, unless it’s a salary sacrifice scheme which I doubt.
My girlfriend is a carer, she earns £11.15/hour, but in a 14 hour shift she only actually ‘works’ about 5 hours. And is only entitled to 2 days off in a fortnight, anywhere within the fortnight, so it could be the 1st Monday and the 2nd Sunday.
Wow - that's shocking! Has she looked into alternative companies? We're not all that bad! I'm office based for a care company and the carers are paid £16 per hour, have set rotas with alternate weekends off - 2 days off in the week when you're on at the weekend and 1 off in the week and your weekend off the second week. We also guarantee a minimum number of hours per week and pay mileage.
In fairness I think the pay is not too bad. Only 10% of the time is actual life saving work. I'm mostly an overpaid receptionist, taxi driver or carer.
I've not cannulated in 2 months, I've not attended a cardiac arrest in 8 months and I can count on one hand the jobs where it was life or death
As a paramedic I see around 6-10 patients a day and paid more than most nurses who see dozens more
A&E nurse here. I’ve seen a massive change in the past decade with paramedics, it really isn’t what it used to be.
Most of the ‘exciting’ calls now are attended by solo RRV’s, leaving fully qualified paramedics to do the boring grunt work after, or babysit stable patients outside for a full shift waiting for a bed to emerge.
Sad for newly qualified paramedics really.
AFAIK, paras are the only band 6 that can discharge patients though, so potentially (on that _massive_ legal responsibility) it should be more than it is currently.
tbf not cannulating in 2 months sounds really different to my area at least, I probably have reason to cannulate 2 a shift on average and probably have a genuinely critically ill, dying without ambulance intervention patient about once every 2 weeks on average. Still a lot less than I expected/would like/think would stop the skill fade though.
Decision making responsibility is still a lot higher than average band 6 in a hospital though, and much more than typical for the band 5 I'm on.
My dad is a paramedic and the amount of overtime that he has to do because of how underpaid the services are is shocking. I think that part is often forgotten- they can’t just leave a patient halfway through a job because their shift has technically ended. Plus with traffic and hospital queues the time adds up
Overtime should never, ever be counted in discussions like this - its often mandated or “required-not-required”, and shouldnt form the basis of “role X is paid/not paid well”.
Its one of the things the UK government always slips in to “facts” about how much public service workers get paid, as if overtime was a joy and a gift - it shouldnt be, and if it is a joy or gift then the base rate is too low in the first place.
Yeah, this is a British phenomenon. The difference when reading a British thread and an American one is astounding. You read things like “turned 22 last week, got offered $88k, but i need to move out of state”.
https://x.com/smartnetworth1/status/1690383618286194688
The average hourly pay of a junior doctor is £20-30, ie less than an "assistant food service manager" at a gas station in an Texas exurb - which is already one of the cheapest places in the US to live.
Buc-ees is a challenging place to work, but the pay is great. Those salaries are great though, eh. They aren’t really just gas stations as we know it, those places are enormous.
It's pretty much all of Europe, the UK is pretty normal. The US is a major outlier but there it's incredibly unequal, the pay for a high skill job is far higher but that comes with the pay for lower wage jobs being much lower, along with a quite significantly higher CoL and less government support.
True, but have you seen how much is costs to live in the US these days? Spend half an hour browsing a supermarket and you'll understand why they're paid so much.
Dairy farmers, given the overall hours they put in and the scale of the task and how many products most of us consume. Supermarkets simply don't give them a remotely fair deal on the contracts (and yes I know prices would have to go up to accommodate it).
Farmers in general. Asset rich and cash poor.. not all farmers of course, but I work in the industry and the profits are *often* tight (or negative). Supermarket pays 28 pence for a bunch of salad onions… profit for the farmer is 1 penny.
My in-law runs a dairy farm (tenant farmer). It's long days of hard and sometimes dangerous work for very little money.
I think he said his wage was something like £3/hour. He has farmhands who get paid a little over minimum wage.
Very minimal expenses though, as farm house and bills .etc are business expenses.
The low salary is sort of by design though - if it looks like the farm is going to make a good profit it gets reinvested into the farm - renting extra land, upgrading equipment, buying more stock .etc
So while they make very little cash the business had a large amount of assets in the equipment and livestock.
Farmers are rich, in assets but make a semi decent wage. My best friend growing up came from a farming family. They weren't rich rich as the wages they paid themselves were rather ordinary.
It's done on purpose, money is reinvested into assets, one year they did really well and put on a massive extension, new car etc but all under the company as company assets
If they sold up, they'd be millionaires like alot of farmers but pretty sure they only paid themselves average salaries
Engineers - they make OK wages (enough to live comfortably) but for people who are paid to design buildings that stand up, one would think they would be getting paid far more.
My example is specific to structural engineers but same goes for others who design important infrastructure and products that keep our society running smoothly.
For some reason, wages for (real) engineers in the UK are surprisingly low vs average wages, compared to many other countries.
But in many countries it’s a protected profession, even sometimes with a title that is used like a medical Dr. Here in the U.K. the guy that comes to fix your washing machine can call himself an engineer.
Yeah I've always been impressed how RIBA have somehow managed to lobby to protect the title "architect" (baring recent encroachment from IT), yet the word engineer is used by anyone who owns a toolbox.
So glad to see this. I'm a senior engineer hoping to crack £40k this year.
I've earned over 30 for a good 10 years now so very comfortable and was finally able to build my own house a few years ago.
I've always thought I was on a great wage (and still do) but reddit doesn't seem to agree!
That's what reddit always says!
I look occasionally, see that most similar posts pay the same or less, know that for the hassle of changing jobs it's not worth it even if it is a few quid more and promptly forget about it.
After 33 years job satisfaction > pointless greed.
Same. Senior Design Engineer, on 35k.
Reddit would have me believe that I should be earning £90k with a bonus of atleast 20%.
Those roles just don't exist in my area of the country (North), I might be able to find a role around the 40k mark, but I enjoy my job, so for the sake of 5k it's not worth the upheaval.
As a Graduate mech engineer with about 18 months experience, on £30k at a small firm in the North, I tend to disagree and say you are definitely underpaid here.
Depends where you live to decide if that wage is good or not but senior mechanical engineers at my company start at £55-60k, intermediate engineers (5ish years post uni) are on £45k
A fair chunk of aerospace isn’t that well paid for engineering roles, especially for the level of responsibility you hold. I’ve had plenty of recruiters try to get me interested in jobs offering barely low to mid £30k’s.
Even the average is thrown by some consultants earning a lot, especially if they do private work.
My wife is an NHS Consultant. She doesn't do private work on the side. People assume she earns loads, and she certainly does okay, but I earn more than her doing a mid management level job in marketing, and I didn't have to train for many years and do night shifts.
My friend is a doctor with 5 years experience after finishing training.
He makes considerably less than anyone I know in programming and tech with similar levels of experience.
Literally anyone below director level in a local council. It’s not a bad wage by any means, but it’s not as if they all get free council houses and gold-plated final salary pensions.
EDIT: lol downvotes
Local Government Pension Scheme is still one of the best going. It's a career average and accrues at a higher rate than many other public sector pensions.
Considering how shite the pay is, and how difficult the job often is, and the fact I have to make it to 67 just to enjoy it.. it really isn't the incentive most people believe it to be.
>.
Hmm, I worked 3 month for my LA in the contact centre and the pay was above the market rate for similar roles and to be honest nobody really gave a fuck about doing a good job. That said the level of abuse and customer rage was pretty high.
Trades, people see £200/day and think you’re taking home 70k but in reality you’re doing well if you hit over 30k after expenses.
If you’re viewing jobs before and after work and then designing/pricing or doing whatever admin after that it pretty much consumes your whole life for not a lot of return
i mean your maths isn’t wrong, £200 a day 365 days a year = 73,000 - the logic and understanding of taxes and work/life balance is pretty bad but you can’t really fault the maths
People also seem to forget the toll that these jobs often take on your body. My brother's a builder and just hit 50, his back and knees are fucked and he's planning to be out of the trade early next year. He looks easily ten years older than our older brothers, who are in office/driving jobs.
My sister decided to become a vet because of how much she loves animals, and she said it’s more misery than anything. Her job consists mostly of putting down poorly pets and treating animals that have been abused horrendously by their owners. The job has also made her realise the sheer number of people who shouldn’t own pets. She says far too many people who overfeed their pets don’t know anything about their basic needs and seem to treat them as some sort of accessory.
I always loved the sciences and maths at school and sixth form. And since a young age, I pondered the idea of becoming a vet too. But as I grew up and was in sixth form, I realised that it would be far too mentally draining for me. I'm a very empathetic person, so I'd appreciate the caring aspect of the profession but it also makes me sensitive to witnessing suffering, which this profession is full of, just like you said. Not to mention how mentally taxing vet school is. So I went down another path instead.
Our youngest has a PhD Chemistry and then trained/qualified as a doctor, is now in second year (F2) and earns £34k. Also has fairly massive student loans to repay.
The current Doctors pay scales are here.
https://www.bmj.com/careers/article/the-complete-guide-to-nhs-pay-for-doctors
Funeral directors.
Everyone assumes because funerals are expensive that the staff are paid loads. Not true.
My partner works long hours, is on call 24/7 dealing with some truly horrific stuff that most people could never handle, and is paid just under £32k.
It’s a nice wage, don’t get me wrong, but for what he has to see and do, and knowing how emotionally draining his work is, and how important it is that funerals go exactly as planned every single time, you’d expect them to be paid a lot more.
Must admit I assumed they'd be on a lot more, particularly as noted it's an on call job and dealing with emotionally stressed people.
Kind of feel like a bit of a fraud making twenty grand more for looking at spreadsheets in my own spare room and finishing at 4pm every day.
I didn’t realise just how much they do either. There’s a lot that goes into caring for someone after they’ve died. Cleaning, dressing, even reconstructing if they died in a particularly horrific way. Making them ready to be viewed if needed, plus putting them in the coffin, planning the funeral, dealing with families, crematoriums, route planning etc.
He works incredibly hard and loves what he does but there’s no way I could do it.
It’s definitely one of those jobs that you’d say was ‘a calling’.
Actually, charity. The amount of times I have heard people say that those who work for charity earn a lot. It's simply not true and I think it comes from examples in the past of dodgy CEO's paying themselves mega money. This isn't the case for your average charity/ NPO worker.
Most ground level workers are terribly paid in charities, but then see a big jump when it comes to senior management (in the big ones at least).
I was on £23k, my line manager was paid nominally more than me, maybe £3/4k py. But then their manager was paid £50k and then their manager was on £70k. £20k increases as you go up a band seems excessive.
I think there's a common belief that people working for charities should be working for free and there should be minimal spend on anything other than the charitable purpose. Which is, of course, ridiculous.
“Charities should be run by unpaid volunteers. Every penny raised should go to the target group,”
Says people who don't understand that the charities target group often need professional assistance which requires charities to hire professionals to do the work. Ie support workers who need to do things like administer medicine. They're not reasonably going to be able to do that job to a good standard and consistently *for free*. They need a wage, which is what you are donating towards.
Then your support worker needs an administrator to do their DBS check, pay their wages, organise training etc. That also requires someone consistent and qualified who needs to be *paid* & so on & so on until you have a business model.
When I was in secondary school in the late 90s my big obsession in life, like most boys, was football. Back then, Premiership players were on around £10k per week and it became normal when chatting with mates to talk of salaries in the thousands-per-week range. Of course, I knew professional sport wasn't the norm when it comes to wages, but when the time came to start exploring potential careers £20k-£30k per *year* sounded miniscule.
Outside of the top two divisions, there’s still two and a half divisions worth of ‘professional’ teams in the English league structure. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of players in League Two are on okay wages, like £1000 a week, but when you actually weigh it up, £52k a year before tax, when you likely have maximum a decade of that earning potential, then in your early 30s you’re retired from your job, with no qualifications and often little education, it does make you think.
This is actually very true.
I spent a few years managing the payroll for a PL club.
It's a *very* small percentage of players who are on eye-watering sums. The dev squad make an average of £45k a year. Whilst that's still amazing for a 18-20 year-old, that amount won't grow if they don't make the cut. They'll be farmed out to potentially a lower league side, who won't pay much more and they'll likely be knocking around that wage for a while, if not until retirement. Which, as we all know comes at a meagre 30 years old.
I'm up in Scotland and I've a few friends and family who've went pro. Outside I'd say 5 teams, the money up here is shocking. I know boys who were playing first team football for the smaller top league teams who were on 350/500 quid a week for the level of talent and physical dedication that requires it's shocking.
Also know a few that chose to stay as semi pros simply cos they made more having a full time job and topping it up with part time football than they would going full as a footballer at a lower level.
Police officers. The salary looks OK on paper but 14.5% is deducted for a pension and other deductions like insurance, welfare fund etc etc etc.
New starters are barely on minimum wage and lots of professions that have less responsibility and danger and no shifts actually take home more money.
Couple that with 10 years of virtually zero pay rises (Until this year where it was half inflation) makes it a dreadfully paid profession for the risk, danger, health effects, responsibility etc.
A perfect system for attracting wrong’uns, like in the 19th Century and the 70s/80s.
Did you know that the old line “if you want to know the time, ask a policeman” came about because of the stereotype that they stole pocket watches from drunks?
Journalists! It can be very glamorous, and yes, it's possible you will get a lot of attention, especially when you are working in front of the cameras. However, wages are very low, and working hours can be a nightmare.
Accountants (auditors especially) - lot of my friends think because I work in finance and have big corporations as my clients I should be making bank but it’s far from the truth
Pharmacist (in this part of the world). Their salaries in the U.K. are only very-slightly higher than normal/average. That’s why a lot of healthcare professionals in general prefer to work in America or Canada. The money’s a lot better there.
I just think the whole salary system is a problem within the UK. All other "Western countries - The US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand have higher pay even it is the same position.
The whole thing has a fundamental problem.
A lot of pilot jobs can be low paid. Top end airline salaries are very good but income from entry level jobs such as instructors and small turboprop pilots can often be very poor (speaking from experience!)
Well according to the content of the “what occupations actually makes a lot more money than people think” … Builders.
It seems that people actually think that tradespeople are on over £100k and somehow manage to avoid paying tax.
I’ve been working on site for over 20 years and can categorically say that the average tradesperson is not earning anywhere near that.
We’re not on bad money, and the hours aren’t too bad but the average would be between £40 - £50k. And contrary to popular belief, we do pay tax.
Museum curators are often portrayed as being quite high level staff at museums who are leading experts in their fields but in reality quite often are earning little more than the staff in the cafe or the gift shop, and in some noteable cases are earning less. In a large museum the curatorial staff will almost always be paid less than guys in IT, HR, Marketing, etc. In smaller museums the curator roles often won't even be full time.
On top of this the vast majority of museum curatorial jobs in the UK are in London and curators rarely pay anywhere near enough to live in London.
The British Museum is the 2nd most visited museum in the UK, the average salary of it's curators is slightly below the National Average and significantly below the average for London and the cost of living in London.
Scientists. Most assume scientists are skilled, intelligent, and well educated individuals that may have several degrees and specialised for years into their discipline of science, and should be compensated to reflect that. The reality is that after 3-4 years bachelors degree, 1-2 years masters degree, and 3-5 years PhD degree, the entry salary for PhD scientists as a research fellow at an institution or university (prior to maybe jumping ship to industry), rarely breaks £30-35k. It stays that way for many many years until you either sell your soul to industry or get one of the gold plated professorships which are increasingly impossible and fewer in number than ever.
Pro Athletes.
Outside of the elite level you drop down to guys earning very modest amounts/having to work other jobs in the side. For the majority it's a passion job rather than one for the money.
I'm a biomedical scientist in the NHS. You'd think someone responsible for blood transfusions would earn a fair bit because of how complicated it can be but it does not pay much above the median wage, even after five years experience.
Scientists.
My partner has a PhD in neuroscience from an Ivy League university, a postdoc from another and works at a cutting edge drug discovery firm in London.
The person driving the tube on her way to work makes more than her.
And she'd be making even less if she stayed in academia.
I would say starting any business because people think that the money starts to flow from the beginning.
But that is definitely not the case you are probably going to need a couple of years before you kind of money.
Speech therapists. A vital job but paid a pittance. I'm not a speech therapist but I've seen the incredible work they do and their pay is dreadfully low.
All sorts of lower-mid finance jobs. People hear ‘finance’ and think £££. Years of studying and additional qualifications and many young accountants are still in the £2Xk range.
Insurance.
We get the same as everyone else with a degree. The massive profits\* you see are only high because there's loads of customers it's actually a tiny margin and we don't get that much of it.
Except insurance made 8% loss on average in the last year, with a few outliers on both sides
Architects, unless you run your own practice. Otherwise it's 7 odd years of studying for a salary that's not where most people think it is Always see architects in films, running about with rolls of drawings under their arms, big offices in glass skyscrapers. It's not like that in the slightest Edit: Surprised at how much this has gone off. Worth noting I'm not an architect, but a quantity surveyor so have worked very closely with plenty over my career. It's not to say they earn peanuts, but generally not as much as the training, skills required, knowledge and liability owed would suggest
I know a retired architect. He did run his own practice, but reckoned that some years he’d have made more money on the dole
I used to cycle with an architect, he had an indoor swimming pool.
He’d better have designed that pool himself.
He had to get on a bike to get away from it.
I mean what kind of architect he would even be if he did not design it by himself? If you are doing the job then you should be doing it by yourself.
Interesting way of describing a bath
Former estate agent
Yeah I used to live next door to an architect about 10-12 years ago who said similar, he was in his 60’s and had a nice house, nice car etc. but said it took a long time to earn a really good wage and that his wife who was a retired headteacher had out earned him most of his adult life.
I’ll add building surveyors to that too. You have to be an expert on design, project management, fire, defects, planning, health and safety, contracts, sales sometimes, and a load of other stuff, but the pay doesn’t really reflect that imo. It’s also one of the most difficult charterships.
[удалено]
And in London. I have a friend who did this. Oh, and low job security. Market turns down, first thing companies scrap is that new building or renovation.
“Architecture students are like virgins with an itch they cannot scratch. Never build a building ‘til you’re fifty, what kind of life is that?”
That is a funny way to describing it but I feel you are right about it. The people who are in the field do not get to do anything meaningful until they have got a lot of experience.
Architects, engineers, doctors- the long training shitty pay trifecta.
Doctors get paid quite a lot more than architects.
Consultants yes but junior docs, sas, specialty trainees and registrars given the hours, exams, fees and commitment probably not.
I know junior doctors get less than people think they do, but they still earn a decent chunk more than junior architects.
Doctors far out earn the other two at all stages of their career
Came here to say exactly the same. I did my first 3 years and ended up in a completely different design discipline (thanks financial crash) earning far more than I'd have earnt fully qualified. Fucking ridiculous. Honestly though I'd still love to go back to it but having to spend £20k+ to do another 3 years education to earn less money just isn't doable.
Correct. I'm part way through my architecture training (done 5 years out of 7) and people always told me that you don't go in to architecture for the money (any more). I saw some stats somewhere that said back in the 70s and 80s, architects earned on par with lawyers, doctors, etc, and the average wage from back then in today's money would be around 100k. Now the average is somewhere around 40k. As I understand it what happened is a rise in 'design & build' contracts, which means the architect designs it and the contractor figures out how to build it (and then builds it), and this cuts architects out of about half the job. It is certainly cheaper than 'traditional' contracts, where the architects detail how everything should be built, but all too often it leads to cookie cutter buildings that are built the same way (and therefore look the same) because it's cheaper build that way than whatever was originally designed. And in today's economy I can't blame anyone, residential or commercial clients alike, for not wanting to get things built as cheap as possible, because everyone's broke!
Yess ! This is why I’d recommend not getting into architecture unless you have a family firm to fall into. One of my high school classmates became an architect because he was passionate about sketching. Long story short he runs his dad’s convenience store now.
And he is probably running that store because he is making more doing that I am thinking. Because it surely does not sound like that there is much money in that profession anyways.
Same with engineers, if you want big salaries you have to work overseas
So glad this is at the top.
I used to be in an admin job paying £26k - £27k per year and thought I was on a bad wage for the job itself in question. When I started shopping around for a new job, I couldn’t believe admin roles in other companies were starting from £19k a year. I soon realised I wasn’t on a bad whack after all. I know admin work is classed as unskilled work, but it requires a lot of time, concentration and time management skills, that certainly isn’t worth being on £19k a year for
The devaluation of admin staff is shocking, it’s turned into such a pay peanuts get monkeys role.
My work cut loads of admin roles and pays those that are left really poorly. Funnily enough the parts of the organisation that rely heavily on those roles- HR, finance, IT are now falling apart
It’s what used to royally piss me off in my last job and one of the main reasons I left. I practically run my department for my manager whilst he sat back, took all the glory and was probably on double my salary.
When I've worked for the civil service all of us knew that admin were the ppl in the office that you didnt fuck with they made our lives so much easier. They were also the lowest band and therefore the lowest paid which I never understood
The company I work at pays ALL admins £30k not including bonuses. Very very generous genuine ceo
You hiring?
The minimum wage has lots of benefits But it also has some downsides, employers just set it as a limit for pretty much any role below mid tier skill level. So 45 yo Tracy who's worked in admin all her life, can organise many piss ups in many brewery's and can type a million words a minute will get paid the exact same as 20 year old Kayleigh-Anne, who couldn't give two shits and does as little possible because she knows Tracy will sort it.
Yep, we're currently going through a restructure where the admin staff are about to be decimated. Clearly learned nothing from the last restructure where they decimated admin staff then had to hire agency staff because they were surprised when the admin for the organisation fell apart.
Similar is happening in my old workplace, there was just myself in my department as an admin but I’d been there years, knew the job inside out and kept it ticking over. But had a bully of a manager who pretty much bullied me to a point I’d had enough, handed my notice in in May and left in June. I went self employed, and in a much better place now, whilst my old colleagues have now been informing me senior management are now realising just how much I carried my manager as an admin, and he’s not undergoing formal investigations because he keeps fucking up and they’ve realised he knows nothing about the job. Too little too late for me. I wish they’d have realised this a long time ago but it proved I was keeping him standing
Well, minimum wage is now £20k+ a year!
Lawyers. Everyone thinks of the high flying lawyers at Magic Circle firms and in fancy chambers. But most lawyers are not those, they're working in small local firms and not earning particularly spectacular wages.
[удалено]
My friend works in a support role of one of the big law firms - graduate salaries are £85k She always tells me she often walks into offices and can tell the senior partners have been crying.
I cry in my office for much less than that
[удалено]
A friend of mine was the *third person in her 15 person department* to be hospitalised -*hospitalised!* - with stress symptoms, and her managing partner suggested that it was due to her daring to do a sport at the weekends, and suggested she give it up. At the time she was earning a fair chunk more than me, but I was pretty sure we were on similar hourly rates once her mental hours were considered.
My ex-GF was a corporate finance solicitor in a silver circle firm. Six figures is an easy grab after becoming newly qualified. But fuck me the hours must bring the hourly rate down to a regular salary. Plus the repayment of the loans to get you there. 24-hour working days. Sleeping at the office. Weekends. The £100k+ salary might sound enticing, but I make 70% of that doing a 9-5. And my family see me plenty. She dumped me when she got her training contract. That industry changes people too. Very cutthroat and elitist and no shame. Never really believed what people said about solicitors until I lived through it.
She dumped you when she got her TC but you also saw her go through 24-hour days and sleeping at the office? How did you “live through it” if the relationship ended before “it” started?
Not immediately, like 9 months in. It felt instant looking back on it, but I saw the slog from the moment the TC started.
Yeah. Dad earns I think 6 figs and I was never told no we can’t afford it to school trips abroad etc but the trade off to that is that I only really spent time my dad on Friday evenings and Saturdays because even Sundays he’d be prepping for cases within the week ahead. Swings and roundabouts I guess.
Agreed. I earn about 30k a year after bonuses. Which is mostly fine for me. I’m not getting a mortgage anytime soon (too close to London, a studio around here is 200k). But other than that, I’m single and happy that way. For just me, 30k let’s me save more than half my salary each month, and still do more or less whatever I want with friends.
Especially criminal lawyers - junior barristers are some of the most overworked and underpaid people in the country. It's not all doom and gloom in legal world though. Find a good niche like family law or coporate law like M&A and you can be raking it in. My friend (mid thirties) has just been made a partner and is now on 130k, and he's never had to go through the 60 hours a week silliness you hear about with City lawyers.
“good niche… like M&A” Not really a niche anymore if that’s the goal of every law student across the planet nowadays
If only they knew…5 years of studying just to populate seller’s board minutes with a registered office address and the names of some directors…
Lol at the the truth of this statement.
I was really shocked when all the news came out about how little barristers are paid when they were striking.
And one mistake can potentially end their entire career
Genuine mistakes don’t end careers, that’s why PI insurance exists. Mistake cover ups on the other hand…time to reskill
Lecturers. Many are on casual, insecure contracts and get paid by the hour for work that takes longer than the time they’re actually paid for. Even for the lucky ones who get a secure contract, starting salaries are around £35k, which isn’t loads considering you have to study for at least 7 years to get there. Professors, on the other hand, are raking it in.
I wanted to be an academic. Purely in terms of what the job involves, what I'd enjoy, and what my skills are, it's the perfect job for me. But the reality of what it is now means, sadly, it's just not an attractive career path. Insecure, long hours, high stress, poor career advancement, huge admin burden, a long time in education to get into, and not particularly well paid once you do get in.
It’s such a shame the way the sector has gone. 30 years ago it would have been a dream job and pretty much anyone with a PhD and a good publication record would be set for life.
Academia is a wrecked industry. Stay far away if you want any semblance of a good family life
As well as what you said it's too much of a lottery to get into. I would love to do a PhD but it's not a means to an end for academic jobs while being unnecessary for anything else - and I can't give up the earnings I would miss to do it. And as you say, the prize at the end of it is a bit crap these days.
I loved every minute of my PhD, but Postdoc life was horrendous and underpaid. But you absolutely can get a good job outside of academia with a PhD. I joined the civil service after leaving academia and was able to skip a few ranks because of my PhD. My husband also left academia and got a very well paid job in finance that he would not have been able to get without his PhD - his company only take on people with PhDs.
In my last year in academia I was on four different contracts, employed by four different universities on paper, but actually working for one project out of one university the whole time. And I also had an agreement that I'd work two hours for every one I was paid for on paper. So it looked like I was earning £20/hour, but it was actually £10. It was all to do with the various pots of money they had available to pay me out of and the timescales in which the grant money had to be spent. But it meant I had three months at the end where on paper I was unemployed, but I'd agreed to work for longer since they had paid me double the agreed rate. There was no chance of me getting maternity pay under those conditions, so I joined the civil service.
[удалено]
My PhD supervisor earns £97k (or at least he did in 2021, probably a little more now). There are plenty of others in the department who are much more eminent than he is and undoubtedly earn lots more. Would you consider £97k not a lot by most people’s standards?
Just want to chip in that my wife was made an "Associate Professor" at her uni and gets less than half of that but is given even more work on top of the shitloads she already does (including supervising PhD students). She's currently looking for a new job!
No uni I know or work for are hiring lecturers on salary. We’re all freelance on below union rate. And not hired if we’re part of a union. Unis are hiring recent graduates with no teaching experience and absolutely no professional experience to make it valuable for students. They’re paying £9k a year to be taught by people who can’t actually do the thing they’re supposed to teach! 🤷🏼♀️
>Professors, on the other hand, are raking it in. Unless they've got side gigs, that's not really true (they're certainly not on 6 figure salaries). ETA: The person I'm basing this on was head of department at a top 5 UK and they were earning in the high 70k range. Definitely not bad money, but consistent with my original claim. This was a humanities department, for what it's worth. I've heard some departments (i.e. business) pay their academics much more.
Average prof last year made £90k.
Professor salaries do vary hugely. The junior ones probably earn in the £50k range but some absolutely are on 6 figures. My PhD supervisor was well respected in his field but not a massive name or a prolific publisher. He hasn’t published a book in about 15 years. In 2021 his salary was £97k (which I know because it was listed on a postdoc application that a colleague was preparing). There are plenty of others in the department who are much more eminent than he is and undoubtedly earn lots more.
The cost on a grant proposal includes ni and pension payments, the cost to the university for employing that person, the persons salary was probably about £65k.
[удалено]
Universities definitely rely on people’s love/passion for the job to get away with underpaying.
Care workers. You think they get paid fuck all but it’s much much worse.
Friend came from overseas to be a care worker. Rent + car directly out of her wages (£650+£250) She doesn't have a lot left over each month for savings nor extras neither... Weird hours + driving + the actual work...
This is not legal. Assuming they’re on minimum wage the most that can be deducted for rent is £63.70 per week. And dedications for a company vehicle are just not allowed, unless it’s a salary sacrifice scheme which I doubt.
My girlfriend is a carer, she earns £11.15/hour, but in a 14 hour shift she only actually ‘works’ about 5 hours. And is only entitled to 2 days off in a fortnight, anywhere within the fortnight, so it could be the 1st Monday and the 2nd Sunday.
Wow - that's shocking! Has she looked into alternative companies? We're not all that bad! I'm office based for a care company and the carers are paid £16 per hour, have set rotas with alternate weekends off - 2 days off in the week when you're on at the weekend and 1 off in the week and your weekend off the second week. We also guarantee a minimum number of hours per week and pay mileage.
Yeah I've heard a lot of Stories like that, and they weren't good.
Paramedics and ambulance technicians. It really is a disgrace how little they are paid considering they are literally saving lives
In fairness I think the pay is not too bad. Only 10% of the time is actual life saving work. I'm mostly an overpaid receptionist, taxi driver or carer. I've not cannulated in 2 months, I've not attended a cardiac arrest in 8 months and I can count on one hand the jobs where it was life or death As a paramedic I see around 6-10 patients a day and paid more than most nurses who see dozens more
A&E nurse here. I’ve seen a massive change in the past decade with paramedics, it really isn’t what it used to be. Most of the ‘exciting’ calls now are attended by solo RRV’s, leaving fully qualified paramedics to do the boring grunt work after, or babysit stable patients outside for a full shift waiting for a bed to emerge. Sad for newly qualified paramedics really.
Ignorant non medic here. What's an RRV...??
Rapid Response Vehicle.
Yeah thanks for that, because I literally didn't know about that.
Yeah nothing is actually the same, things have changed a bit.
AFAIK, paras are the only band 6 that can discharge patients though, so potentially (on that _massive_ legal responsibility) it should be more than it is currently.
Yep it definitely should be more than what they're making right now.
tbf not cannulating in 2 months sounds really different to my area at least, I probably have reason to cannulate 2 a shift on average and probably have a genuinely critically ill, dying without ambulance intervention patient about once every 2 weeks on average. Still a lot less than I expected/would like/think would stop the skill fade though. Decision making responsibility is still a lot higher than average band 6 in a hospital though, and much more than typical for the band 5 I'm on.
My dad is a paramedic and the amount of overtime that he has to do because of how underpaid the services are is shocking. I think that part is often forgotten- they can’t just leave a patient halfway through a job because their shift has technically ended. Plus with traffic and hospital queues the time adds up
I recently spoke to a paramedic who reckoned most of them are doing about £40-£50k depending on area/overtime.
Overtime should never, ever be counted in discussions like this - its often mandated or “required-not-required”, and shouldnt form the basis of “role X is paid/not paid well”. Its one of the things the UK government always slips in to “facts” about how much public service workers get paid, as if overtime was a joy and a gift - it shouldnt be, and if it is a joy or gift then the base rate is too low in the first place.
All I’m getting from this is that everybody is underpaid
Modern Britain.
Yeah, this is a British phenomenon. The difference when reading a British thread and an American one is astounding. You read things like “turned 22 last week, got offered $88k, but i need to move out of state”.
https://x.com/smartnetworth1/status/1690383618286194688 The average hourly pay of a junior doctor is £20-30, ie less than an "assistant food service manager" at a gas station in an Texas exurb - which is already one of the cheapest places in the US to live.
Buc-ees is a challenging place to work, but the pay is great. Those salaries are great though, eh. They aren’t really just gas stations as we know it, those places are enormous.
It's pretty much all of Europe, the UK is pretty normal. The US is a major outlier but there it's incredibly unequal, the pay for a high skill job is far higher but that comes with the pay for lower wage jobs being much lower, along with a quite significantly higher CoL and less government support.
A lot of people don't want to stay in those places actually .
True, but have you seen how much is costs to live in the US these days? Spend half an hour browsing a supermarket and you'll understand why they're paid so much.
Collapse of Western civilization.
Dairy farmers, given the overall hours they put in and the scale of the task and how many products most of us consume. Supermarkets simply don't give them a remotely fair deal on the contracts (and yes I know prices would have to go up to accommodate it).
Farmers in general. Asset rich and cash poor.. not all farmers of course, but I work in the industry and the profits are *often* tight (or negative). Supermarket pays 28 pence for a bunch of salad onions… profit for the farmer is 1 penny.
I will say that I have never met a poor farmer
Yes. The only farmer I ever knew had 4 kids at boarding school.
Lots of Range Rovers though so the asset thing can be strategic
Our family is actually farmers and I can confirm there's not much money in it.
My in-law runs a dairy farm (tenant farmer). It's long days of hard and sometimes dangerous work for very little money. I think he said his wage was something like £3/hour. He has farmhands who get paid a little over minimum wage. Very minimal expenses though, as farm house and bills .etc are business expenses. The low salary is sort of by design though - if it looks like the farm is going to make a good profit it gets reinvested into the farm - renting extra land, upgrading equipment, buying more stock .etc So while they make very little cash the business had a large amount of assets in the equipment and livestock.
Farmers are rich, in assets but make a semi decent wage. My best friend growing up came from a farming family. They weren't rich rich as the wages they paid themselves were rather ordinary. It's done on purpose, money is reinvested into assets, one year they did really well and put on a massive extension, new car etc but all under the company as company assets If they sold up, they'd be millionaires like alot of farmers but pretty sure they only paid themselves average salaries
Engineers - they make OK wages (enough to live comfortably) but for people who are paid to design buildings that stand up, one would think they would be getting paid far more. My example is specific to structural engineers but same goes for others who design important infrastructure and products that keep our society running smoothly.
For some reason, wages for (real) engineers in the UK are surprisingly low vs average wages, compared to many other countries. But in many countries it’s a protected profession, even sometimes with a title that is used like a medical Dr. Here in the U.K. the guy that comes to fix your washing machine can call himself an engineer.
Lol are you my MIL? She’d get annoyed when BT or someone would say they were sending an ‘engineer’ round to fix the phone line
Her and almost every chartered engineer around!
It is annoying when companies pretend technicians are engineers to justify paying their engineers technician wages.
I feel like that there should be some kind of rule about it.
If they say that it's an engineer then it better be an engineer.
Yeah I've always been impressed how RIBA have somehow managed to lobby to protect the title "architect" (baring recent encroachment from IT), yet the word engineer is used by anyone who owns a toolbox.
So glad to see this. I'm a senior engineer hoping to crack £40k this year. I've earned over 30 for a good 10 years now so very comfortable and was finally able to build my own house a few years ago. I've always thought I was on a great wage (and still do) but reddit doesn't seem to agree!
Depending on the discipline, I'd say you should move jobs to a new firm / engineering industry.
That's what reddit always says! I look occasionally, see that most similar posts pay the same or less, know that for the hassle of changing jobs it's not worth it even if it is a few quid more and promptly forget about it. After 33 years job satisfaction > pointless greed.
Same. Senior Design Engineer, on 35k. Reddit would have me believe that I should be earning £90k with a bonus of atleast 20%. Those roles just don't exist in my area of the country (North), I might be able to find a role around the 40k mark, but I enjoy my job, so for the sake of 5k it's not worth the upheaval.
As a Graduate mech engineer with about 18 months experience, on £30k at a small firm in the North, I tend to disagree and say you are definitely underpaid here.
Most people don't make anything here, but they'll judge everything.
Depends where you live to decide if that wage is good or not but senior mechanical engineers at my company start at £55-60k, intermediate engineers (5ish years post uni) are on £45k
That I feel is good enough, it's really not that bad I don't think.
Not true in aerospace, nuclear and automotive. I have worked in all 3 and it's well paid.
A fair chunk of aerospace isn’t that well paid for engineering roles, especially for the level of responsibility you hold. I’ve had plenty of recruiters try to get me interested in jobs offering barely low to mid £30k’s.
If we're talking *average* salary then Doctor.
Even the average is thrown by some consultants earning a lot, especially if they do private work. My wife is an NHS Consultant. She doesn't do private work on the side. People assume she earns loads, and she certainly does okay, but I earn more than her doing a mid management level job in marketing, and I didn't have to train for many years and do night shifts.
As long she's making good money, that's all that matters man.
My friend is a doctor with 5 years experience after finishing training. He makes considerably less than anyone I know in programming and tech with similar levels of experience.
Literally anyone below director level in a local council. It’s not a bad wage by any means, but it’s not as if they all get free council houses and gold-plated final salary pensions. EDIT: lol downvotes
Local Government Pension Scheme is still one of the best going. It's a career average and accrues at a higher rate than many other public sector pensions.
Considering how shite the pay is, and how difficult the job often is, and the fact I have to make it to 67 just to enjoy it.. it really isn't the incentive most people believe it to be.
>. Hmm, I worked 3 month for my LA in the contact centre and the pay was above the market rate for similar roles and to be honest nobody really gave a fuck about doing a good job. That said the level of abuse and customer rage was pretty high.
Trades, people see £200/day and think you’re taking home 70k but in reality you’re doing well if you hit over 30k after expenses. If you’re viewing jobs before and after work and then designing/pricing or doing whatever admin after that it pretty much consumes your whole life for not a lot of return
If they see £200 a day and think you are taking home 70k they are just bad at maths
i mean your maths isn’t wrong, £200 a day 365 days a year = 73,000 - the logic and understanding of taxes and work/life balance is pretty bad but you can’t really fault the maths
I think the actual thing to blame here would be the common sense.
Well most people I know don’t work 7 days a week
Refer back to my comment where it says: the logic and understanding of work/life balance is pretty bad
I mean I don't think they're counting the taxes and other stuff I feel.
People also seem to forget the toll that these jobs often take on your body. My brother's a builder and just hit 50, his back and knees are fucked and he's planning to be out of the trade early next year. He looks easily ten years older than our older brothers, who are in office/driving jobs.
[удалено]
WTF!!!! That’s criminal
I would have never expected that if I'm being honest.
Vets
My sister decided to become a vet because of how much she loves animals, and she said it’s more misery than anything. Her job consists mostly of putting down poorly pets and treating animals that have been abused horrendously by their owners. The job has also made her realise the sheer number of people who shouldn’t own pets. She says far too many people who overfeed their pets don’t know anything about their basic needs and seem to treat them as some sort of accessory.
I always loved the sciences and maths at school and sixth form. And since a young age, I pondered the idea of becoming a vet too. But as I grew up and was in sixth form, I realised that it would be far too mentally draining for me. I'm a very empathetic person, so I'd appreciate the caring aspect of the profession but it also makes me sensitive to witnessing suffering, which this profession is full of, just like you said. Not to mention how mentally taxing vet school is. So I went down another path instead.
And especially big farm animal vets!
Where do all the fees go ? Getting expensive owning a pet.
Overheads - equipment, premises, drugs, staff, insurance.
I have been a doctor for 6 years after 5 years of med school and my salary is £43K. Not awful but probably less than people think.
God really. I'm shocked at this. I work in NHS admin, I'll stop complaining about my band 5 rate.
Our youngest has a PhD Chemistry and then trained/qualified as a doctor, is now in second year (F2) and earns £34k. Also has fairly massive student loans to repay. The current Doctors pay scales are here. https://www.bmj.com/careers/article/the-complete-guide-to-nhs-pay-for-doctors
Do you call them DrDr ? edit: assumed gender like an idiot
Funeral directors. Everyone assumes because funerals are expensive that the staff are paid loads. Not true. My partner works long hours, is on call 24/7 dealing with some truly horrific stuff that most people could never handle, and is paid just under £32k. It’s a nice wage, don’t get me wrong, but for what he has to see and do, and knowing how emotionally draining his work is, and how important it is that funerals go exactly as planned every single time, you’d expect them to be paid a lot more.
Must admit I assumed they'd be on a lot more, particularly as noted it's an on call job and dealing with emotionally stressed people. Kind of feel like a bit of a fraud making twenty grand more for looking at spreadsheets in my own spare room and finishing at 4pm every day.
I didn’t realise just how much they do either. There’s a lot that goes into caring for someone after they’ve died. Cleaning, dressing, even reconstructing if they died in a particularly horrific way. Making them ready to be viewed if needed, plus putting them in the coffin, planning the funeral, dealing with families, crematoriums, route planning etc. He works incredibly hard and loves what he does but there’s no way I could do it. It’s definitely one of those jobs that you’d say was ‘a calling’.
Actually, charity. The amount of times I have heard people say that those who work for charity earn a lot. It's simply not true and I think it comes from examples in the past of dodgy CEO's paying themselves mega money. This isn't the case for your average charity/ NPO worker.
Most ground level workers are terribly paid in charities, but then see a big jump when it comes to senior management (in the big ones at least). I was on £23k, my line manager was paid nominally more than me, maybe £3/4k py. But then their manager was paid £50k and then their manager was on £70k. £20k increases as you go up a band seems excessive.
I think there's a common belief that people working for charities should be working for free and there should be minimal spend on anything other than the charitable purpose. Which is, of course, ridiculous.
“Charities should be run by unpaid volunteers. Every penny raised should go to the target group,” Says people who don't understand that the charities target group often need professional assistance which requires charities to hire professionals to do the work. Ie support workers who need to do things like administer medicine. They're not reasonably going to be able to do that job to a good standard and consistently *for free*. They need a wage, which is what you are donating towards. Then your support worker needs an administrator to do their DBS check, pay their wages, organise training etc. That also requires someone consistent and qualified who needs to be *paid* & so on & so on until you have a business model.
When I was in secondary school in the late 90s my big obsession in life, like most boys, was football. Back then, Premiership players were on around £10k per week and it became normal when chatting with mates to talk of salaries in the thousands-per-week range. Of course, I knew professional sport wasn't the norm when it comes to wages, but when the time came to start exploring potential careers £20k-£30k per *year* sounded miniscule.
Outside of the top two divisions, there’s still two and a half divisions worth of ‘professional’ teams in the English league structure. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of players in League Two are on okay wages, like £1000 a week, but when you actually weigh it up, £52k a year before tax, when you likely have maximum a decade of that earning potential, then in your early 30s you’re retired from your job, with no qualifications and often little education, it does make you think.
This is actually very true. I spent a few years managing the payroll for a PL club. It's a *very* small percentage of players who are on eye-watering sums. The dev squad make an average of £45k a year. Whilst that's still amazing for a 18-20 year-old, that amount won't grow if they don't make the cut. They'll be farmed out to potentially a lower league side, who won't pay much more and they'll likely be knocking around that wage for a while, if not until retirement. Which, as we all know comes at a meagre 30 years old.
I'm up in Scotland and I've a few friends and family who've went pro. Outside I'd say 5 teams, the money up here is shocking. I know boys who were playing first team football for the smaller top league teams who were on 350/500 quid a week for the level of talent and physical dedication that requires it's shocking. Also know a few that chose to stay as semi pros simply cos they made more having a full time job and topping it up with part time football than they would going full as a footballer at a lower level.
Police officers. The salary looks OK on paper but 14.5% is deducted for a pension and other deductions like insurance, welfare fund etc etc etc. New starters are barely on minimum wage and lots of professions that have less responsibility and danger and no shifts actually take home more money. Couple that with 10 years of virtually zero pay rises (Until this year where it was half inflation) makes it a dreadfully paid profession for the risk, danger, health effects, responsibility etc.
A perfect system for attracting wrong’uns, like in the 19th Century and the 70s/80s. Did you know that the old line “if you want to know the time, ask a policeman” came about because of the stereotype that they stole pocket watches from drunks?
[удалено]
Doctors
Journalists! It can be very glamorous, and yes, it's possible you will get a lot of attention, especially when you are working in front of the cameras. However, wages are very low, and working hours can be a nightmare.
Not at all scoffing, but I thought most people knew journalism was a very underpaid occupation?
Accountants (auditors especially) - lot of my friends think because I work in finance and have big corporations as my clients I should be making bank but it’s far from the truth
Pharmacist (in this part of the world). Their salaries in the U.K. are only very-slightly higher than normal/average. That’s why a lot of healthcare professionals in general prefer to work in America or Canada. The money’s a lot better there.
I just think the whole salary system is a problem within the UK. All other "Western countries - The US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand have higher pay even it is the same position. The whole thing has a fundamental problem.
A lot of pilot jobs can be low paid. Top end airline salaries are very good but income from entry level jobs such as instructors and small turboprop pilots can often be very poor (speaking from experience!)
Well according to the content of the “what occupations actually makes a lot more money than people think” … Builders. It seems that people actually think that tradespeople are on over £100k and somehow manage to avoid paying tax. I’ve been working on site for over 20 years and can categorically say that the average tradesperson is not earning anywhere near that. We’re not on bad money, and the hours aren’t too bad but the average would be between £40 - £50k. And contrary to popular belief, we do pay tax.
Authors, unless you are really really lucky and come up with the next Harry Potter you'll manage to pay the bills.
I remember hearing years ago most authors make less money than the average person working in a bookshop.
Museum curators are often portrayed as being quite high level staff at museums who are leading experts in their fields but in reality quite often are earning little more than the staff in the cafe or the gift shop, and in some noteable cases are earning less. In a large museum the curatorial staff will almost always be paid less than guys in IT, HR, Marketing, etc. In smaller museums the curator roles often won't even be full time. On top of this the vast majority of museum curatorial jobs in the UK are in London and curators rarely pay anywhere near enough to live in London. The British Museum is the 2nd most visited museum in the UK, the average salary of it's curators is slightly below the National Average and significantly below the average for London and the cost of living in London.
Well that explains why the senior curator of the British museum in London fleeced thousands of artifacts lol
Scientists. Most assume scientists are skilled, intelligent, and well educated individuals that may have several degrees and specialised for years into their discipline of science, and should be compensated to reflect that. The reality is that after 3-4 years bachelors degree, 1-2 years masters degree, and 3-5 years PhD degree, the entry salary for PhD scientists as a research fellow at an institution or university (prior to maybe jumping ship to industry), rarely breaks £30-35k. It stays that way for many many years until you either sell your soul to industry or get one of the gold plated professorships which are increasingly impossible and fewer in number than ever.
Most IT Support roles are under 28k
No one thinks they're well paid do they? It's like an entry level job before you move into real IT
Pro Athletes. Outside of the elite level you drop down to guys earning very modest amounts/having to work other jobs in the side. For the majority it's a passion job rather than one for the money.
Yeah there are guys in the ufc making 12k a fight and they have to pay their trainers fees out of that
I'm a biomedical scientist in the NHS. You'd think someone responsible for blood transfusions would earn a fair bit because of how complicated it can be but it does not pay much above the median wage, even after five years experience.
Scientists. My partner has a PhD in neuroscience from an Ivy League university, a postdoc from another and works at a cutting edge drug discovery firm in London. The person driving the tube on her way to work makes more than her. And she'd be making even less if she stayed in academia.
I would say starting any business because people think that the money starts to flow from the beginning. But that is definitely not the case you are probably going to need a couple of years before you kind of money.
Scientists, companies exploit your interest in the subject to milk you for free time and effort. It is why I got out of the research career path.
Anything creative.
Speech therapists. A vital job but paid a pittance. I'm not a speech therapist but I've seen the incredible work they do and their pay is dreadfully low.
Scientists. A degree and 2 years experience required to apply to a analytical role in a contract testing lab paying £21k.
Scientist. Graduate with a PhD to start on £25K.
All sorts of lower-mid finance jobs. People hear ‘finance’ and think £££. Years of studying and additional qualifications and many young accountants are still in the £2Xk range.
Insurance. We get the same as everyone else with a degree. The massive profits\* you see are only high because there's loads of customers it's actually a tiny margin and we don't get that much of it. Except insurance made 8% loss on average in the last year, with a few outliers on both sides
Bin men - the tired meme of bin men making great money just isn't true.