Starmergeddon: They Came And Ate Us

[sockwithaticket]

Aye, because there's an excess of workers in England right enough. Jesus.

There's enough of an excess of graduates for wages to be absolutely pish for young people.

We could probably do with getting some of the 25% inactive working age folk off their sofas as well

While we probably could, it's not that straightfoward. Are there jobs near these people? Who's helping them relocate if not? Then there are other considerations like working age not necessarily meaning fit for work and plenty of stay at home parents because getting into work would mean securing childcare which is expensive enough to effectively mean they'd be working for free.

A lot has been made of the 8 - 9 million economically inactive, working age people people, but when there's typically only about 800k vacancies at any given time (or at least that's the figure I've seen in some reporting) what are we expecting them all to do?

[el capitan]

Automation definitely needs to be embraced more, and is pitifully slow in being adopted in certain industries, but it's not as simple as just doing away with the need for x amount of jobs.

In the past I dealt with most of the warehousing giants, and in that sector the heavily automated system needs an army of machine engineers and technical staff working at a constant to keep them running 24/7. So you still need a vast number of human workers, and more skilled and better paid ones than eg. your average box packers.

[Paddington Bear]

World’s smallest violin but a £40 something k salary does not go miles with rents and the cost of living as they are. It certainly doesn’t give a young professional the life they probably expected to have

If I discount that £40k using RPI back to when I graduated in 2001, it's probably less than what folk were getting then so I think the frustration is understandable.

Yup, UK wage stagnation is very real.

I think this gets left out too often of ‘Gen Z won’t work hard’ discourse - why would they bother? Working 50 hours a week for £35k a year makes you a mug essentially, if you have any life at all you’re almost certainly worried about whether you’ll break even by the end of the month

[Slick]

There's enough of an excess of graduates for wages to be absolutely pish for young people.

We could probably do with getting some of the 25% inactive working age folk off their sofas as well

While we probably could, it's not that straightfoward. Are there jobs near these people? Who's helping them relocate if not? Then there are other considerations like working age not necessarily meaning fit for work and plenty of stay at home parents because getting into work would mean securing childcare which is expensive enough to effectively mean they'd be working for free.

A lot has been made of the 8 - 9 million economically inactive, working age people people, but when there's typically only about 800k vacancies at any given time (or at least that's the figure I've seen in some reporting) what are we expecting them all to do?

I do obviously get that we are not talking about everyone but there are a good proportion that choose not to.

In saying that, we need to be so much better at trading and creating pathways for young people to get into trades etc.

It’s all fucked really, I know it’s been mentioned before but it does my head in that you have supermarkets posting multi billion pound profits while their employees have to apply for state benefits to survive

[Tichtheid]

We could probably do with getting some of the 25% inactive working age folk off their sofas as well

While we probably could, it's not that straightfoward. Are there jobs near these people? Who's helping them relocate if not? Then there are other considerations like working age not necessarily meaning fit for work and plenty of stay at home parents because getting into work would mean securing childcare which is expensive enough to effectively mean they'd be working for free.

A lot has been made of the 8 - 9 million economically inactive, working age people people, but when there's typically only about 800k vacancies at any given time (or at least that's the figure I've seen in some reporting) what are we expecting them all to do?

I do obviously get that we are not talking about everyone but there are a good proportion that choose not to.

In saying that, we need to be so much better at trading and creating pathways for young people to get into trades etc.

It’s all fucked really, I know it’s been mentioned before but it does my head in that you have supermarkets posting multi billion pound profits while their employees have to apply for state benefits to survive

As of Jan last year, 38% of Universal Credit recipients were in employment. The use of food banks among the employed has rocketed.

[fishfoodie]

If I discount that £40k using RPI back to when I graduated in 2001, it's probably less than what folk were getting then so I think the frustration is understandable.

Yup, UK wage stagnation is very real.

I think this gets left out too often of ‘Gen Z won’t work hard’ discourse - why would they bother? Working 50 hours a week for £35k a year makes you a mug essentially, if you have any life at all you’re almost certainly worried about whether you’ll break even by the end of the month

Tangentially, this is also why the RTO orders by many multinationals is epically stupid, & divorced from reality !

They piss & moan about workforce availability, & wages, & simultaneously they make it impossible for potentially excellent employees to join the company; because they want them to work for a pittance, & commute into someplace with exorbitant rents/mortgage payments !

Why can't they except that they'd be much better off with someone WFH from Stockport or Stoke-on-Trent, where they can afford to rent, & get childcare; rather than expecting them to spend far too much of their wages on accommodation & still have to commute for hours every day ?

[sockwithaticket]

We could probably do with getting some of the 25% inactive working age folk off their sofas as well

While we probably could, it's not that straightfoward. Are there jobs near these people? Who's helping them relocate if not? Then there are other considerations like working age not necessarily meaning fit for work and plenty of stay at home parents because getting into work would mean securing childcare which is expensive enough to effectively mean they'd be working for free.

A lot has been made of the 8 - 9 million economically inactive, working age people people, but when there's typically only about 800k vacancies at any given time (or at least that's the figure I've seen in some reporting) what are we expecting them all to do?

I do obviously get that we are not talking about everyone but there are a good proportion that choose not to.

In saying that, we need to be so much better at trading and creating pathways for young people to get into trades etc.

It’s all fucked really, I know it’s been mentioned before but it does my head in that you have supermarkets posting multi billion pound profits while their employees have to apply for state benefits to survive

There will definitely be some who could do more, but I think there's often an underestimation of how much those economically inactive people are contributing to saving the public purse through being more or less full time carers or how many of them are basically stuck in really difficult spots. Rural areas or gutted industrial towns with few opportunities and not much in the way of public transport. If you can't afford a car and there are only three buses a day, getting to somewhere where there is work can be pretty tricky. Meanwhile, if you've not been working, getting the money together to move to where the work is can also be a pretty big obstacle.

On the bolded, I think there's also some mileage in creating better re-training pathways for the less young . Say someone in their late 20s - mid 40s wants to try and get away from retail or being an office drone and become an electrician or carpenter, there's a huge blocker in that a lot of training is really geared towards school leavers or early 20s who haven't built up much in the way of financial responsibilities and can afford to be paid the pittance that apprentices receive for a couple of years. Someone with a serious rent or mortgage, let alone a family to support, may find it difficult to make it work financially while they get up to speed. We're constantly told about shortages and yet we don't make it easy for anyone but those just starting out in life to move over. It applies outside of the trades too, obviously. Re-training can be a costly thing and once you've done it it might be a little while before you match previous earnings as you're starting at the bottom again. Which we might say is something people should be aware of when committing to such a path and plan accordingly, but surely in the areas where we consistently have shortages something can be done to facilitate things a little better.
Going back about a decade now and dealing with an entirely different area, but I remember doing my NQT year alongside a guy who was re-training as a teacher. He was coming in for physics, which has been an acute shortage subject for as long as I can remember. Someone the education system desperately needs, but he was really struggling to balance it with having young kids due to the ruinous cost of childcare and the longer hours teaching required meant he was paying for more of it than he had in his previous job. Ultimately he jacked it in before qualifying and went back to the lab.

Very much with you on the final point. The amount of bitching that comes out of business groups when the minimum wage is tweaked always does my head in. They've reaped the rewards for a long time of effectively being subsidised by the state due to the prevalence of in-work benefits. People working full time shouldn't need to be on benefits just to provide the basics for themselves, companies shouldn't be getting away with paying poverty wages in general, but particularly when they're not exactly struggling.

[Paddington Bear]

Yup, UK wage stagnation is very real.

I think this gets left out too often of ‘Gen Z won’t work hard’ discourse - why would they bother? Working 50 hours a week for £35k a year makes you a mug essentially, if you have any life at all you’re almost certainly worried about whether you’ll break even by the end of the month

Tangentially, this is also why the RTO orders by many multinationals is epically stupid, & divorced from reality !

They piss & moan about workforce availability, & wages, & simultaneously they make it impossible for potentially excellent employees to join the company; because they want them to work for a pittance, & commute into someplace with exorbitant rents/mortgage payments !

Why can't they except that they'd be much better off with someone WFH from Stockport or Stoke-on-Trent, where they can afford to rent, & get childcare; rather than expecting them to spend far too much of their wages on accommodation & still have to commute for hours every day ?

I get the point you’re making, but interestingly in my world it is people at junior levels like myself banging on about RTO. Not in the boomer way but in trying to get something like 3 structured days a week with a whole team together. It’s bloody hard to learn soft skills/develop a contact book etc from behind a screen.

[Biffer]

I think this gets left out too often of ‘Gen Z won’t work hard’ discourse - why would they bother? Working 50 hours a week for £35k a year makes you a mug essentially, if you have any life at all you’re almost certainly worried about whether you’ll break even by the end of the month

Tangentially, this is also why the RTO orders by many multinationals is epically stupid, & divorced from reality !

They piss & moan about workforce availability, & wages, & simultaneously they make it impossible for potentially excellent employees to join the company; because they want them to work for a pittance, & commute into someplace with exorbitant rents/mortgage payments !

Why can't they except that they'd be much better off with someone WFH from Stockport or Stoke-on-Trent, where they can afford to rent, & get childcare; rather than expecting them to spend far too much of their wages on accommodation & still have to commute for hours every day ?

I get the point you’re making, but interestingly in my world it is people at junior levels like myself banging on about RTO. Not in the boomer way but in trying to get something like 3 structured days a week with a whole team together. It’s bloody hard to learn soft skills/develop a contact book etc from behind a screen.

That’s one of the reasons our guys need to be in the office three days a week. Really difficult to develop junior engineers when they’re at home on their own without senior colleagues to ask when they hit a problem.

[dpedin]

Tangentially, this is also why the RTO orders by many multinationals is epically stupid, & divorced from reality !

They piss & moan about workforce availability, & wages, & simultaneously they make it impossible for potentially excellent employees to join the company; because they want them to work for a pittance, & commute into someplace with exorbitant rents/mortgage payments !

Why can't they except that they'd be much better off with someone WFH from Stockport or Stoke-on-Trent, where they can afford to rent, & get childcare; rather than expecting them to spend far too much of their wages on accommodation & still have to commute for hours every day ?

I get the point you’re making, but interestingly in my world it is people at junior levels like myself banging on about RTO. Not in the boomer way but in trying to get something like 3 structured days a week with a whole team together. It’s bloody hard to learn soft skills/develop a contact book etc from behind a screen.

That’s one of the reasons our guys need to be in the office three days a week. Really difficult to develop junior engineers when they’re at home on their own without senior colleagues to ask when they hit a problem.

Would I swap starting work in the 80s compared to now? No feckin chance! I earned enough in first job as a graduate to buy my first flat in Edinburgh, went on ski holidays every year and could afford to heat, eat and go out for beers and food when I wanted to. The young folk of today have it very hard with starter salaries barely enough to survive on. My kids and their mates all work very hard, are flexible and well qualified yet many are on dodgy contracts with no long term job guarantee or development opportunities. They hand over a large % of their salary for a room in a rented house/flat and know that any chance of a pension in later years is a pipedream. As a consequence they are more hard headed and mercenary about their work, more demanding about their work arrangements and will move jobs more often for career opportunities and better money. It is a tough, tough life for those 20-30 year olds in the current labour market.

Bottom line is we Baby Boomers/Gen X who have retired or are at the end of our working career have had it so good and have left the world in a shittier place than how we found it. Affordable housing in nice areas, access to good free education, sensible working arrangements, stable political world and a guaranteed pension for most is something most of the younger generation can only dream of now!

[C T]

World’s smallest violin but a £40 something k salary does not go miles with rents and the cost of living as they are. It certainly doesn’t give a young professional the life they probably expected to have

Found myself reading this and being dismissive. Originally thought "Well I'm on c45k and just away to turn 41. I'm doing OK." But:

- I live in the west midlands, so hardly the south east
- My student loan was done and dusted by early 30's, no way that's happening if I went to Uni even just 5 years after I did
- Married with no kids. Been living together for c10 years now. Obviously not the reason but this made a huge difference financially to me, was swimming in debt c10 years ago
- On this note, debt is fucking expensive, a hard thing to prevent from spiraling and an even harder thing to get yourself out of
- Mortgaging for the past c6 years, not renting. Another example of how it's more expensive to be poor

I need to say I've been guilty of in the past talking about how my generation have been screwed, but I'm seeing another gap opening. The younger generation/s are getting screwed harder.

In saying all of this, personally I had a very tight/frugal 3 to 4 years to get myself out of the debt hole and save my half of the deposit. I was also lucky, my credit card company messed up a calculation and ended up crediting me 5k so that helped. Eventually I was approved an interest free balance transfer card, and over time doing transfers from one card to the other I finally got it sorted.

[Paddington Bear]

Tangentially, this is also why the RTO orders by many multinationals is epically stupid, & divorced from reality !

They piss & moan about workforce availability, & wages, & simultaneously they make it impossible for potentially excellent employees to join the company; because they want them to work for a pittance, & commute into someplace with exorbitant rents/mortgage payments !

Why can't they except that they'd be much better off with someone WFH from Stockport or Stoke-on-Trent, where they can afford to rent, & get childcare; rather than expecting them to spend far too much of their wages on accommodation & still have to commute for hours every day ?

I get the point you’re making, but interestingly in my world it is people at junior levels like myself banging on about RTO. Not in the boomer way but in trying to get something like 3 structured days a week with a whole team together. It’s bloody hard to learn soft skills/develop a contact book etc from behind a screen.

That’s one of the reasons our guys need to be in the office three days a week. Really difficult to develop junior engineers when they’re at home on their own without senior colleagues to ask when they hit a problem.

Exactly this. Even minor stuff - In an hour in the office this morning I’ve had two queries outside my own knowledge answered because I can talk to the bloke sat next to me who’s been doing it for 30 years and he’ll answer straight away. Theoretically this can be done on Teams, in practice it doesn’t work out.

But the caveat of course is that there’s no point making junior people turn up if the senior people don’t have to, which happens far too often.

[Paddington Bear]

World’s smallest violin but a £40 something k salary does not go miles with rents and the cost of living as they are. It certainly doesn’t give a young professional the life they probably expected to have

Found myself reading this and being dismissive. Originally thought "Well I'm on c45k and just away to turn 41. I'm doing OK." But:

- I live in the west midlands, so hardly the south east
- My student loan was done and dusted by early 30's, no way that's happening if I went to Uni even just 5 years after I did
- Married with no kids. Been living together for c10 years now. Obviously not the reason but this made a huge difference financially to me, was swimming in debt c10 years ago
- On this note, debt is fucking expensive, a hard thing to prevent from spiraling and an even harder thing to get yourself out of
- Mortgaging for the past c6 years, not renting. Another example of how it's more expensive to be poor

I need to say I've been guilty of in the past talking about how my generation have been screwed, but I'm seeing another gap opening. The younger generation/s are getting screwed harder.

In saying all of this, personally I had a very tight/frugal 3 to 4 years to get myself out of the debt hole and save my half of the deposit. I was also lucky, my credit card company messed up a calculation and ended up crediting me 5k so that helped. Eventually I was approved an interest free balance transfer card, and over time doing transfers from one card to the other I finally got it sorted.

Yeah to be clear I’m not pretending a London based young professional on £45k is the world’s biggest victim, but there ought to be a reasonable expectation of living a decent life having gone through the education system to corporate life, and increasingly it’s barely better than doing something menial. Which has led more than a few to decide not to bother

[Sandstorm]

World’s smallest violin but a £40 something k salary does not go miles with rents and the cost of living as they are. It certainly doesn’t give a young professional the life they probably expected to have

Found myself reading this and being dismissive. Originally thought "Well I'm on c45k and just away to turn 41. I'm doing OK." But:

- I live in the west midlands, so hardly the south east
- My student loan was done and dusted by early 30's, no way that's happening if I went to Uni even just 5 years after I did
- Married with no kids. Been living together for c10 years now. Obviously not the reason but this made a huge difference financially to me, was swimming in debt c10 years ago
- On this note, debt is fucking expensive, a hard thing to prevent from spiraling and an even harder thing to get yourself out of
- Mortgaging for the past c6 years, not renting. Another example of how it's more expensive to be poor

I need to say I've been guilty of in the past talking about how my generation have been screwed, but I'm seeing another gap opening. The younger generation/s are getting screwed harder.

In saying all of this, personally I had a very tight/frugal 3 to 4 years to get myself out of the debt hole and save my half of the deposit. I was also lucky, my credit card company messed up a calculation and ended up crediting me 5k so that helped. Eventually I was approved an interest free balance transfer card, and over time doing transfers from one card to the other I finally got it sorted.

So much this!! The next generation are getting shafted. It used to be that only people on minimum wage worked 2+ jobs, now graduates on salaries are working a second job after hours/on the side to make ends meet & pay off that cnuting student loan.

[Tichtheid]

World’s smallest violin but a £40 something k salary does not go miles with rents and the cost of living as they are. It certainly doesn’t give a young professional the life they probably expected to have

Found myself reading this and being dismissive. Originally thought "Well I'm on c45k and just away to turn 41. I'm doing OK." But:

- I live in the west midlands, so hardly the south east
- My student loan was done and dusted by early 30's, no way that's happening if I went to Uni even just 5 years after I did
- Married with no kids. Been living together for c10 years now. Obviously not the reason but this made a huge difference financially to me, was swimming in debt c10 years ago
- On this note, debt is fucking expensive, a hard thing to prevent from spiraling and an even harder thing to get yourself out of
- Mortgaging for the past c6 years, not renting. Another example of how it's more expensive to be poor

I need to say I've been guilty of in the past talking about how my generation have been screwed, but I'm seeing another gap opening. The younger generation/s are getting screwed harder.

In saying all of this, personally I had a very tight/frugal 3 to 4 years to get myself out of the debt hole and save my half of the deposit. I was also lucky, my credit card company messed up a calculation and ended up crediting me 5k so that helped. Eventually I was approved an interest free balance transfer card, and over time doing transfers from one card to the other I finally got it sorted.

Yeah to be clear I’m not pretending a London based young professional on £45k is the world’s biggest victim, but there ought to be a reasonable expectation of living a decent life having gone through the education system to corporate life, and increasingly it’s barely better than doing something menial. Which has led more than a few to decide not to bother

Zoopla says that Bexley is the cheapest area to rent in London, when you look at what's available the cheapest works out at around £900 per month each, let's call it eleven thousand a year. That £11K probably accounts for around £15-16K from the £45K when tax and NI is taken into account.

[robmatic]

Found myself reading this and being dismissive. Originally thought "Well I'm on c45k and just away to turn 41. I'm doing OK." But:

- I live in the west midlands, so hardly the south east
- My student loan was done and dusted by early 30's, no way that's happening if I went to Uni even just 5 years after I did
- Married with no kids. Been living together for c10 years now. Obviously not the reason but this made a huge difference financially to me, was swimming in debt c10 years ago
- On this note, debt is fucking expensive, a hard thing to prevent from spiraling and an even harder thing to get yourself out of
- Mortgaging for the past c6 years, not renting. Another example of how it's more expensive to be poor

I need to say I've been guilty of in the past talking about how my generation have been screwed, but I'm seeing another gap opening. The younger generation/s are getting screwed harder.

In saying all of this, personally I had a very tight/frugal 3 to 4 years to get myself out of the debt hole and save my half of the deposit. I was also lucky, my credit card company messed up a calculation and ended up crediting me 5k so that helped. Eventually I was approved an interest free balance transfer card, and over time doing transfers from one card to the other I finally got it sorted.

Yeah to be clear I’m not pretending a London based young professional on £45k is the world’s biggest victim, but there ought to be a reasonable expectation of living a decent life having gone through the education system to corporate life, and increasingly it’s barely better than doing something menial. Which has led more than a few to decide not to bother

Zoopla says that Bexley is the cheapest area to rent in London, when you look at what's available the cheapest works out at around £900 per month each, let's call it eleven thousand a year. That £11K probably accounts for around £15-16K from the £45K when tax and NI is taken into account.

I just had a look at what's available in Edinburgh right now and the cheapest furnished studio flat is £850pm, and there isn't loads around at that level. A third of your income purely on rent to live as a young professional in basically the worst property in the city.

[Paddington Bear]

Found myself reading this and being dismissive. Originally thought "Well I'm on c45k and just away to turn 41. I'm doing OK." But:

- I live in the west midlands, so hardly the south east
- My student loan was done and dusted by early 30's, no way that's happening if I went to Uni even just 5 years after I did
- Married with no kids. Been living together for c10 years now. Obviously not the reason but this made a huge difference financially to me, was swimming in debt c10 years ago
- On this note, debt is fucking expensive, a hard thing to prevent from spiraling and an even harder thing to get yourself out of
- Mortgaging for the past c6 years, not renting. Another example of how it's more expensive to be poor

I need to say I've been guilty of in the past talking about how my generation have been screwed, but I'm seeing another gap opening. The younger generation/s are getting screwed harder.

In saying all of this, personally I had a very tight/frugal 3 to 4 years to get myself out of the debt hole and save my half of the deposit. I was also lucky, my credit card company messed up a calculation and ended up crediting me 5k so that helped. Eventually I was approved an interest free balance transfer card, and over time doing transfers from one card to the other I finally got it sorted.

Yeah to be clear I’m not pretending a London based young professional on £45k is the world’s biggest victim, but there ought to be a reasonable expectation of living a decent life having gone through the education system to corporate life, and increasingly it’s barely better than doing something menial. Which has led more than a few to decide not to bother

Zoopla says that Bexley is the cheapest area to rent in London, when you look at what's available the cheapest works out at around £900 per month each, let's call it eleven thousand a year. That £11K probably accounts for around £15-16K from the £45K when tax and NI is taken into account.

Exactly this. And Bexley is barely London, you’re certainly not getting the benefits of London life out there.

[SaintK]

Yeah to be clear I’m not pretending a London based young professional on £45k is the world’s biggest victim, but there ought to be a reasonable expectation of living a decent life having gone through the education system to corporate life, and increasingly it’s barely better than doing something menial. Which has led more than a few to decide not to bother

Zoopla says that Bexley is the cheapest area to rent in London, when you look at what's available the cheapest works out at around £900 per month each, let's call it eleven thousand a year. That £11K probably accounts for around £15-16K from the £45K when tax and NI is taken into account.

Exactly this. And Bexley is barely London, you’re certainly not getting the benefits of London life out there.

Bexley, Erith and Dartford are not exactly leafy suburbia either!!!!

[Sandstorm]

Rent in the UK is higher than it was 20 years ago, but not triple. The cost of food, booze and transport however has tripled in 2 decades and that's where younger people struggle.

[inactionman]

The housing market in London and the South-East is mad.

We rent our house out in Bath - not exactly a cheap place in its own right - and what we charge for a 3 double bed, 3 reception house 10 minute's walk from the Royal Crescent is the same as a bedsit in Tower Hamlets.

We're not taking the piss in our rent so we could go higher, but even so, it's just mind-boggling.

[Tichtheid]

The housing market in London and the South-East is mad.

We rent our house out in Bath - not exactly a cheap place in its own right - and what we charge for a 3 double bed, 3 reception house 10 minute's walk from the Royal Crescent is the same as a bedsit in Tower Hamlets.

We're not taking the piss in our rent so we could go higher, but even so, it's just mind-boggling.

My daughter and her boyfriend are paying around £2K/month for a one bedroomed place in Mile End. They are both in good jobs, but it's still a hefty bite every month.

[TedMaul]

2 bedder in Marylebone? £5,500 a month please.

[_Os_]

Scotland has a pool of over 30 million workers who don't require visas or international relocation available immediately to the south. And the additional 300000 working migrants who come to the UK each year are generally not choosing to go to Scotland. I'm not sure why you think it is immigration specifically that is the answer to Scotland struggling to fill vacancies.

Aye, because there's an excess of workers in England right enough. Jesus.

There's enough of an excess of graduates for wages to be absolutely pish for young people.

Strange thing about UK wage stagnation since 2008 (not just a problem for young graduates, older people often don't know what they could make if they emigrated), is how it's always presented as a free floating fact. No evidenced reason ever really gets mentioned. Yours looks as good as any, just not enough high quality jobs for the workers the UK is producing. People are being educated/trained for an economy which is patchy outside the South East and even there is smaller than many realise. Somewhat like a developing country producing more educated/trained people than the developing economy can absorb.

I'm a bit suspicious that immigration is to blame, which is usually the only reason offered. The US also has high immigration but there's no similar wage stagnation. Theresa May when she was in the Home Office (pre-Brexit) suppressed 9 reports that found no link between immigration and wages. For there to be something there needs to be a sector with more potential workers (supply) than jobs (demand), and the supply side of that equation to have both locals and immigrants competing for jobs. Pre-Brexit it was claimed immigrants were driving down the wages of low skilled workers, people knew there were some sectors where migrants dominated the labour market (agri), but the other part of the equation of there being a local labour pool was shown post-Brexit to not be there. The care sector gets mentioned a lot now, but there's massive vacancies in that sector, like fruit/veg pickers if there's a very weak local labour supply then removing immigrants doesn't inflate wages it instead risks collapsing the sector.

[_Os_]

Aye, because there's an excess of workers in England right enough. Jesus.

There's enough of an excess of graduates for wages to be absolutely pish for young people.

Our graduates this year start on about £32k and will advance to about £43k in two years.

I know of graduate positions that look like this: £27k, London but not zone 1, BSc required Masters preferred, published or any experience required. Salary bump to around £36k after x years.

People will compete like rats in a sack for that job too. Crazy stuff starts happening once an entire economy is centred around not many sectors in one city, which all the best in that country then gravitate towards (a lot of developing countries have this dynamic). Once someone has invested time/money/ego into something they're not going to care about the finances not really stacking up. "You would be earning comparable money and saving more if you worked in a warehouse in a provincial town" isn't going to fly.

From my research a skilled UK service sector worker is now earning about half what the same person in a large US city is, with a similar cost of living.

[Sandstorm]

From my research a skilled UK service sector worker is now earning about half what the same person in a large US city is, with a similar cost of living.

Indeed. And no-one here is talking about the NHS where young doctors and nurses with huge debt fuck off overseas first chance they get. Sector will crash hard in a few years and probably never recover.

[fishfoodie]

I think this gets left out too often of ‘Gen Z won’t work hard’ discourse - why would they bother? Working 50 hours a week for £35k a year makes you a mug essentially, if you have any life at all you’re almost certainly worried about whether you’ll break even by the end of the month

Tangentially, this is also why the RTO orders by many multinationals is epically stupid, & divorced from reality !

They piss & moan about workforce availability, & wages, & simultaneously they make it impossible for potentially excellent employees to join the company; because they want them to work for a pittance, & commute into someplace with exorbitant rents/mortgage payments !

Why can't they except that they'd be much better off with someone WFH from Stockport or Stoke-on-Trent, where they can afford to rent, & get childcare; rather than expecting them to spend far too much of their wages on accommodation & still have to commute for hours every day ?

I get the point you’re making, but interestingly in my world it is people at junior levels like myself banging on about RTO. Not in the boomer way but in trying to get something like 3 structured days a week with a whole team together. It’s bloody hard to learn soft skills/develop a contact book etc from behind a screen.

Accepted; that is a valid argument for a return to office in many cases, but it was rather ironic in my own case, as the company had just laid off most of my colleagues in my location, to replace them with cheaper ones in India

All RTO means to me is hours spent commuting to go to an office that isn't occupied by anyone I work with on a regular basis; but of course there are to be no exceptions to RTO, no matter how absurd the individual case

[Blackmac]

From my research a skilled UK service sector worker is now earning about half what the same person in a large US city is, with a similar cost of living.

Indeed. And no-one here is talking about the NHS where young doctors and nurses with huge debt fuck off overseas first chance they get. Sector will crash hard in a few years and probably never recover.

Most people who decry public sector workers have absolutely no concept of the conditions that doctors, nurses, paramedics, police officers etc work under. It's virtually impossible nowadays for youngsters to complete the length of service required to get to a pensionable age. They are just fucked and burnt out well before. Unless something drastic is done in respect of pay and conditions the quality of service will collapse beyond comprehension as no one wants to do the job. It possibly already has.


PS. I deliberately didn't include Firefighters.

[dpedin]

From my research a skilled UK service sector worker is now earning about half what the same person in a large US city is, with a similar cost of living.

Indeed. And no-one here is talking about the NHS where young doctors and nurses with huge debt fuck off overseas first chance they get. Sector will crash hard in a few years and probably never recover.

Most people who decry public sector workers have absolutely no concept of the conditions that doctors, nurses, paramedics, police officers etc work under. It's virtually impossible nowadays for youngsters to complete the length of service required to get to a pensionable age. They are just fucked and burnt out well before. Unless something drastic is done in respect of pay and conditions the quality of service will collapse beyond comprehension as no one wants to do the job. It possibly already has.


PS. I deliberately didn't include Firefighters.

Absolutely this! These guys work their arses off and then get derided in the press when they ask for a living wage. Junior doctors and nurses in the NHS are valued almost everywhere else in the western world apart from the country they trained and worked in, the pressures and strains they are under at a young age are way more than most folk realize, or could cope with themselves. Feck knows what happens when they all decide to piss off abroad for more money, better T&Cs and more respect.

[I like neeps]

To bring this back to Starmageddon, the problem he has is that the people we're talking about are his voters and Labour have no meaningful policies to do anything it.

[Biffer]

One in five British people under 45 think a leader shouldn’t have to bother with elections. What the fuck has gone wrong?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... SApp_Other

[Paddington Bear]

One in five British people under 45 think a leader shouldn’t have to bother with elections. What the fuck has gone wrong?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... SApp_Other

20 years of declining living standards. I think also modern Britain is exceptionally ‘process brained’ and someone blasting their way through that and petty bureaucracy would be no bad thing. Some people will take that argument a few steps further

[Slick]

One in five British people under 45 think a leader shouldn’t have to bother with elections. What the fuck has gone wrong?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... SApp_Other

20 years of declining living standards. I think also modern Britain is exceptionally ‘process brained’ and someone blasting their way through that and petty bureaucracy would be no bad thing. Some people will take that argument a few steps further

Would get rid of all the short term thinking that has got us here.

Not that I think it’s a tremendous idea of course

[fishfoodie]

One in five British people under 45 think a leader shouldn’t have to bother with elections. What the fuck has gone wrong?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... SApp_Other

20 years of declining living standards. I think also modern Britain is exceptionally ‘process brained’ and someone blasting their way through that and petty bureaucracy would be no bad thing. Some people will take that argument a few steps further

Would get rid of all the short term thinking that has got us here.

Not that I think it’s a tremendous idea of course

I don't think there's the stomach for the amount of Electoral reform necessary to fix FPTP, but the populists are still able to get a significant percentage of the population to believe that their lies & bullshit are realistic !

There's a general dis-satisfaction with existing Governing formulas around Europe, all stirred up by the Kremlin & the Far-Right, but people just blindly accepting that some shower of populists who've never actually held power have all the answers, & they absolutely won't be monsters in power, despite everything they say, & everything they've said they'll do, is pure 1930's Germany !

[JM2K6]

To bring this back to Starmageddon, the problem he has is that the people we're talking about are his voters and Labour have no meaningful policies to do anything it.

He's still being led by the nose by media and what he thinks is public opinion. He and by extension his party are responding to events by essentially campaigning in order to win the public "vote". It's a nonsense and betrays a total misunderstanding in what the public as a whole want to see.

[I like neeps]

To bring this back to Starmageddon, the problem he has is that the people we're talking about are his voters and Labour have no meaningful policies to do anything it.

He's still being led by the nose by media and what he thinks is public opinion. He and by extension his party are responding to events by essentially campaigning in order to win the public "vote". It's a nonsense and betrays a total misunderstanding in what the public as a whole want to see.

Couldn't agree more. Copying Johnson's government by focus group. Complete misunderstanding of what a leader is and does.

[Paddington Bear]

I’m clearly an unsympathetic audience for them, but I am very surprised at how unprepared for government they have proved. I knew I wouldn’t love their plan, but I did assume there would be one

[Sandstorm]

I’m clearly an unsympathetic audience for them, but I am very surprised at how unprepared for government they have proved. I knew I wouldn’t love their plan, but I did assume there would be one

Think even those who lurve Starmer is getting annoyed at their lack of action.

[JM2K6]

It's not exactly a lack of action. They've introduced a bunch of bills and enacted some of the policies they campaigned on. They clearly do have a plan.

The problem is right now they are mostly focusing on the things that will get them better press (so they think) and coming out with hot air over immigration, culture war shit, and other Tory cover band populist nonsense doomed to failure that won't move the needle one bit. Instead of, y'know, putting people first, enacting a progressive agenda, and sticking to their guns rather than getting bogged down in a media war they can't win.

No amount of columns in the express by Starmer will change the fact that they're too chicken shit to push through genuine change that risks upsetting the right wing media and the mythological Tory swing voter.

[fishfoodie]

It's not exactly a lack of action. They've introduced a bunch of bills and enacted some of the policies they campaigned on. They clearly do have a plan.

The problem is right now they are mostly focusing on the things that will get them better press (so they think) and coming out with hot air over immigration, culture war shit, and other Tory cover band populist nonsense doomed to failure that won't move the needle one bit. Instead of, y'know, putting people first, enacting a progressive agenda, and sticking to their guns rather than getting bogged down in a media war they can't win.

No amount of columns in the express by Starmer will change the fact that they're too chicken shit to push through genuine change that risks upsetting the right wing media and the mythological Tory swing voter.

It's incredible peoples ability to ignore their complicity, for more than a decade, in how they've created this giant pool of shit that they find themselves in, & now they want the Party they've voted against that entire time, to turn things around in a few months !!!

[JM2K6]

But we should be clear that Reeves and Streeting specifically are a huge part of this. Both are natural Tories with dumbarse ideas about very important shit and exactly what the country does not need right now.

We'll see if they're smart enough to adapt, otherwise it'll be a case of a hugely embarrassing bonfire and a new set of faces who don't get all their ideas from the yanks.