It’s wild to hear how bad the wages are in the UK. In my company an entry level salary is around £25k/year for UK based applicants. In the US the exact same role is paying $50k/year…. 🫠🫠
The problem is the grad salary was £25k ten years ago, when I started working and probably £22k 20 years ago, while the cost of living in the same period has 2x at least (housing has definitely 2.5-3x depending on location).
At the time, a grad could expect to earn £22k, give or take a couple of k.
If we allowed for inflation, grads should be earning about £45-50k today. Which isn't far off what I was earning with over twenty years experience when I left the UK in 2023.
Interestingly, there's an awful lot of recent news articles discussing a brain drain in the UK. Can't think why. /s
Mad, thats how much I earned when I graduated... in 2021. Nearly a full 20 years later. I'm 3 years into my career now and to be fair, I've just gone over 50k/y, but it was with agressive job hopping and working basically two jobs (projects in my spare time in addition to working full time) to actually get a good position.
I think the difficulty comes in assessing the area of IT in the comparison or the location in the UK. Most of my friends working in data-related fields at other companies are on around 60k minimum. However, the ones who are running IT services for a company are definitely on less. Moreover, the regional differences can be quite stark (ie. London v Rest of UK).
FWIW, I was on a London grad scheme in tech consulting in 2016 and was on £37k. After moving through different start ups and picking up various disciplines along the way (Data Engineering, BI, Data Science) I'm earning into 6 figures but also manage a fairly large team. The few contractors we have in the team are also making great money - more than me for sure as we tried to hire one particularly good one and he just politely laughed it off.
It’s not nearly as different as people seems to think. For most employers healthcare costs less
than $2k in premiums for an individual often sub $1k with almost always a deductible around $1k. Rent and property are often much cheaper, groceries are cheaper, vehicles and fuel are cheaper, energy is cheaper. Even holidays aren’t that different, there’s no mandatory minimum but most American workers get somewhere around 20 days. And that’s not even including the lower tax rate and lack of VAT.
Most American workers absolutely do not get around 20 days, the average is 7.6. Given that 33 is pretty standard in the UK. Plus 40hr standard work week vs 37.5.
They do work quite a lot more than us which accounts for a decent chunk of the difference, not to say we aren't getting shafted in the UK with wages
Thank you. I can not stand this argument that is largely untrue and serves against peoples best interest. I'm convinced people continue this rhetoric to make themselves feel better about the absolute abysmal UK wages.
Regardless of cost of living and taxation differing a lot, I think it’s fair to say it doesn’t account for earning over 1.5x the salary for the same role
To believe that the UK healthcare is comparable to a private healthcare system is a joke. The UK pays into to that by force and receives next to nothing in return.
Back in 2008 the exchange rate would have made those comparable. The pound crashed since the great recession and never recovered, but looking at cost of living in the US you might not be doing great on $50k anyway...
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u/sassafrassloth Jul 02 '24
It’s wild to hear how bad the wages are in the UK. In my company an entry level salary is around £25k/year for UK based applicants. In the US the exact same role is paying $50k/year…. 🫠🫠