But that dude at the Bank of England said pay rises would cause wage-price spirals! And here I was thinking we were all in this together.
It helps that those who earn more are also going to be those with the ability to approve pay rises and bonuses for those at the top. Most are not going to miss a chance to earn a few thousand more, even a cost of living crisis and rising inflation will not slow down the bonus train.
Not all of us.. I’m on plenty more than that and our pay rises were terrible across the board.
I’d quite like a pay rise. Agency workers don’t get them though. Can’t currently afford heating in our house! On the plus side I am lucky to have two jobs I can fit in around my childcare needs. So that’s nice.
Sigh, most people here clearly don’t understand the labour market.
The people who generally earn the most, do so because they have very specialist skills that are not easily replaceable. Therefore, despite there being fewer new roles for them to move into compared to a lower earning person, they have real responsibility and if they left it could cause serious damage. Hence the more senior you get, the longer your notice period is. This makes salary negotiations easier, not harder.
This is also reflected in the mortgage market where they will get higher multiples of income, because their jobs are typically more secure.
It’s always easy to cry about someone else who’s successful getting more than you, but you need to understand what’s actually happening rather than just throwing a strop on the interwebs.
Yes, I imagine they’re more experienced and harder to replace
Hey look more identity politics to divide us so we fight each other rather than unite against a Government that has contempt for us all
It is honestly shocking what people consider ‘high earners’ in the UK. Elsewhere this salary is standard once you have a certain amount of education and/or experience. I speak as a Brit on a teacher’s salary in Canada. The ‘average range’ in the UK is way too narrow. It seems pretty hard to climb up to anything more and is one large reason why I left.
That’s because they add more value to their respective businesses.
This worries me because my company want it both ways.
Extreme specialist knowledge but fuck all pay to reflect that.
50k isn’t a high earner though is it. These articles are geared to make you resent your neighbour with a slightly nicer car rather than the CEO making 300 times what you do.
Usually the way.
If you’re on £50k already you got there by having leverage, either your skills are in demand, you have a good union, or you control decision making in a business over wages, or you’re in the “in crowd” in the business.
Those factors don’t go away because of inflation.
And people like me(Waiters,retail etc…) won’t get offered a single raise because most companies view us as expendable tools to use and discard. Thank fuck I live in a bedsit otherwise, I would be completely fucked.
Lots of people in this thread talking about ‘specialist skills’ and ‘supply and demand’ are missing the forest for three trees in my opinion. These things aren’t immutable laws of physics- and there’s no reason we couldn’t decide to provide better quality of outcomes to people over it.
If supply and demand says nurses, or any low income field need have low wages – then maybe let’s make having low wages should be less terrible. Being poor now in the UK is violent, and it’s getting more violent under this government every day. If ‘supply and demand’ says low earners have to suffer to prop this whole thing up, then we should stop letting ‘supply and demand’ run anything more than non-essential markets.
The central banks can’t raise interest rates in a meaningful way like Paul Volcker did in the 80s to counter the over 15yrs of inflation. Inflation ran > 5% on average from 1969 to 1982, the “great inflation” lasted from 1965 to 1982.
There were four recessions and two energy shortages. GDP debt ratios and inflation linked debt is considerably higher now than then.
This feeling in the water that people have now over the disparity between wage increases and price hikes is real because we’re beginning to see the current policies in action. Andrew Bailey was tone deaf in his message, but it highlights the point. If salaries rise, we’re fucked. If they don’t rise, we’re fucked.
My guess – it’s highly likely that their plan is very limited and small moves in monetary and government policy so as to maintain investor confidence and enough of us workers placated that we don’t riot. Salaries rising puts more pressure on an already pretty buggered problem. Noone knows the answers to this massive problem, everything is built on confidence. Human nature is such, we’ll sleep walk into a recession. The recession will be deep enough to reset the supply demand labour problem (unemployment). The rich will lose billions, the poor will lose everything. The rich will still be rich and the poor still poor. The governments will do quantitive easing again and we’ll repeat this problem. I might get the specifics wrong, but I think there’s more pain coming
15 comments
But that dude at the Bank of England said pay rises would cause wage-price spirals! And here I was thinking we were all in this together.
It helps that those who earn more are also going to be those with the ability to approve pay rises and bonuses for those at the top. Most are not going to miss a chance to earn a few thousand more, even a cost of living crisis and rising inflation will not slow down the bonus train.
Not all of us.. I’m on plenty more than that and our pay rises were terrible across the board.
I’d quite like a pay rise. Agency workers don’t get them though. Can’t currently afford heating in our house! On the plus side I am lucky to have two jobs I can fit in around my childcare needs. So that’s nice.
Sigh, most people here clearly don’t understand the labour market.
The people who generally earn the most, do so because they have very specialist skills that are not easily replaceable. Therefore, despite there being fewer new roles for them to move into compared to a lower earning person, they have real responsibility and if they left it could cause serious damage. Hence the more senior you get, the longer your notice period is. This makes salary negotiations easier, not harder.
This is also reflected in the mortgage market where they will get higher multiples of income, because their jobs are typically more secure.
It’s always easy to cry about someone else who’s successful getting more than you, but you need to understand what’s actually happening rather than just throwing a strop on the interwebs.
Yes, I imagine they’re more experienced and harder to replace
Hey look more identity politics to divide us so we fight each other rather than unite against a Government that has contempt for us all
It is honestly shocking what people consider ‘high earners’ in the UK. Elsewhere this salary is standard once you have a certain amount of education and/or experience. I speak as a Brit on a teacher’s salary in Canada. The ‘average range’ in the UK is way too narrow. It seems pretty hard to climb up to anything more and is one large reason why I left.
That’s because they add more value to their respective businesses.
This worries me because my company want it both ways.
Extreme specialist knowledge but fuck all pay to reflect that.
50k isn’t a high earner though is it. These articles are geared to make you resent your neighbour with a slightly nicer car rather than the CEO making 300 times what you do.
Usually the way.
If you’re on £50k already you got there by having leverage, either your skills are in demand, you have a good union, or you control decision making in a business over wages, or you’re in the “in crowd” in the business.
Those factors don’t go away because of inflation.
And people like me(Waiters,retail etc…) won’t get offered a single raise because most companies view us as expendable tools to use and discard. Thank fuck I live in a bedsit otherwise, I would be completely fucked.
Lots of people in this thread talking about ‘specialist skills’ and ‘supply and demand’ are missing the forest for three trees in my opinion. These things aren’t immutable laws of physics- and there’s no reason we couldn’t decide to provide better quality of outcomes to people over it.
If supply and demand says nurses, or any low income field need have low wages – then maybe let’s make having low wages should be less terrible. Being poor now in the UK is violent, and it’s getting more violent under this government every day. If ‘supply and demand’ says low earners have to suffer to prop this whole thing up, then we should stop letting ‘supply and demand’ run anything more than non-essential markets.
The central banks can’t raise interest rates in a meaningful way like Paul Volcker did in the 80s to counter the over 15yrs of inflation. Inflation ran > 5% on average from 1969 to 1982, the “great inflation” lasted from 1965 to 1982.
There were four recessions and two energy shortages. GDP debt ratios and inflation linked debt is considerably higher now than then.
This feeling in the water that people have now over the disparity between wage increases and price hikes is real because we’re beginning to see the current policies in action. Andrew Bailey was tone deaf in his message, but it highlights the point. If salaries rise, we’re fucked. If they don’t rise, we’re fucked.
My guess – it’s highly likely that their plan is very limited and small moves in monetary and government policy so as to maintain investor confidence and enough of us workers placated that we don’t riot. Salaries rising puts more pressure on an already pretty buggered problem. Noone knows the answers to this massive problem, everything is built on confidence. Human nature is such, we’ll sleep walk into a recession. The recession will be deep enough to reset the supply demand labour problem (unemployment). The rich will lose billions, the poor will lose everything. The rich will still be rich and the poor still poor. The governments will do quantitive easing again and we’ll repeat this problem. I might get the specifics wrong, but I think there’s more pain coming