When being interviewed on the radio, I was told by the broadcaster that £90,000 was only ‘middle-class income' and not enough for MPs. She was, very clearly, out of touch with reality.
The audio version of this video is available here:
The transcript is:
Is £90,000 a year a middle-class income?
I ask because I had an interview with Claire Voges of LBC and The Times newspaper on Sunday night when we were discussing the pay that MPs receive, and she suggested that £90,000 a year wasn't middle-class income, and it was very hard to see how anybody could really live on that amount of money.
Well, there you go. There's some indication of just how out of touch with reality some journalists and political commentators are. And let's put her in context. She began working for David Cameron in something like 2008 as a speechwriter, and went on to work for Boris Johnson when he was the Mayor of London. So, she probably is out of touch with reality.
But the question is, is £90,000 a year high pay? Because that is what MPs are now going to be receiving. £91,000, I think, to be precise.
And so, to answer that question, and to look at Clare's claim that this is a poor amount of middle-class income, I just went and looked at some data, it's really not hard, and I looked at a website called Statista. It's well worth looking at. Sometimes you have to register to get the data, but a lot of it is free. And most of it, when it comes to the UK, is ONS - Office for National Statistics - data, reinterpreted, reinterpreted in the form of graphs.
So let's look at this one. This graph shows median annual earnings for full-time employees in the United Kingdom in 2023. So, it's pretty up to date.
And what it shows is median income, which is the middle value of income within the range.
And the ranges in question are split into 10 equal parts. In other words, there's the bottom 10%, the next 10%, right up to the top 10%. And there will be the same number of people in each of those groups. So, out of all the income earners in the UK, which I think is something like 28 million people, there will be roughly 2. 8 million in each of these groups.
Okay, you've followed the statistics so far. Now let's look at the numbers. At the bottom, median income is £21,000 per person who earns in the bottom 10 per cent of income earners.
Now I stress that is not the bottom 10 percent of earners overall in the economy because of course not everybody in the bottom 10 percent of earners does actually work. This is about income from work and for those who work full time £21,000 a year is the median pay for somebody in the bottom group of earners, which is unsurprising because basically that's national minimum wage, reinterpreted by the number of hours worked a week on average for people in the UK. So that figure is really not very odd. In fact, it's exactly what we'd expect. And that's reassuring because it tells us that this data is reliable.
Then let's go right up to the top. And what you'll see is that the median earnings for somebody in that top group are £66,669. Now, of course, that is a median because if we took an average, in other words, we took the total pay of the people in that top 10 per cent and divided by roughly 2. 8 million, the figure would be much higher than that, because there are some exceptionally well-paid people, as we know, who would distort the data.
And if we look at this chart as a whole, what we see is, actually, in a median appraisal, nobody gets £90,000 a year. Now, of course, that doesn't mean to say nobody does, but £90,000 a year is high, very high; in fact, £23,000 more than the median earnings of a full-time employee in the top 10 per cent of full-time income earners in the UK as a whole.
So is £90,000 a year middle-class earnings, on average? Clearly not. And yet we have people claiming that, as commentators employed by LBC, a reputable radio company, as if that is the case.
And poor old MPs, we can't recruit them, was her claim because they don't get paid enough to cover the basics of life. You do wonder where some people live, and on what planet that somewhere might be located.
Let's look at another chart because this one is also quite interesting. This one is for 2021/22, which is the most up-to-date data available from the Office for National Statistics. It's, again, a chart from Statista, and this one looks at average gross income per household in the United Kingdom, again by decile group, so split equally. And this one is looking at total incomes, not income from employment, but it is also, as far as I can work out, looking at a mean this time, and not a median. In other words, this is the total income of the group divided by the number of people in it. So it is, in that sense, a little distorted from the previous one, but that's good for the sake of comparison.
Now, let's look at that bottom group again. And instead of them earning £21,000 a year, now, the average, the mean, the one that most people think of as an average, is just £14,729. And this is per household, not per person, and the average household will have two people, near enough, two adult people in it. A bit less, but still, heavily distorted in favor of the multi-adult household.
Let's now go up the range and when we get to the ninth decile, that is the group who are one below the top. They, as a household, have gross income before tax of an average of £92,731. So maybe this is the group that Clare Voges calls middle class. But if so, they are a small part of society. They're already in the top 20%.
Now that's not in the middle. The middle are either the fifth decile or the sixth decile here. And when we look at them, the household income is around £50,000, way below the sum that she thinks is required for anybody to possibly live.
And when we get right to the top here, you can see. that the average is way higher than the figure was from earnings, because it's now £196,638.
Why is that? Well, there are two earners in these households, on average. And this is a mean average, not a median. So the previous £66,000 is doubled to £132,000. But then we're distorted by the fact that this is a mean average, and we are taking into consideration income from other sources. So, rents and dividends and interest and so on are brought into account here which they aren't in the previous calculation. On that basis, Clare Voges clearly thinks that £196,000 is normal and middle class.
I'm afraid to say she's out of touch with reality. That is not normal; that is exceptional.
People really should be able to live on £91,000 a year in the UK, and a lot of people do, and they are exceptionally well paid. And I will be honest with you, I'm a university professor. If I was full time, I would make a little less than the £91,000 a year that she's talking about, but I think that's a pretty generous payment. And it is. But she doesn't understand that.
And we have as a consequence a problem. And the problem is that we have people in our media and people in politics who don't understand what it is like to live a normal life.
I am well aware that I am well off on the salary that I am paid by my university and which comes to me via other sources. I will be open and honest about that. I always have been. But I know that that puts me in a very fortunate position. I don't believe that Clare Voges is in any way in touch with reality.
I happen to think it is true that MPs should be paid a good salary. We should be able to buy the best. But paying more than £91,000 a year for the people who are on the back benches doing the routine work? No, we don't need to pay more than that. That's good enough.
And they shouldn't be allowed side hustles.
They shouldn't be allowed lots of freebies.
They shouldn't be allowed a lot of other things that they have been used to in the past either, like subs from business for their office expenses which are a bung by any other word.
No, all of those things should go. £91,000 a year and the expenses allowed by parliament, I'm happy to agree to.
A second home I'm also happy to agree to because otherwise that job would be impossible but more than £91,000 a year of salary, that takes MPs out of touch with reality. Our commentators in the media might be, but we really don't want that of our MPs. They need to be somewhere related to what is going on in the real world. And £91,000 a year brings them somewhere in that direction. It's enough.
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In a recent post, I suggested that ‘the overwhelming majority of us live in Mile End Road.’
Claire Voges clearly agrees, and does not make the mistake of confusing income with class!
What she surely means is that we are NOT upper class. That’s the TOPs – the One Percent – and the wannabes. Perhaps 10%, but they don’t know and wouldn’t count. So middle-class.
To be represented – as if – by a mere bar graph – is so demeaning. It’s the racehorses, the holiday lifestyles, the international reach, the indifference to all else.
One day, such statistics will not be allowed. Or just focus on us, not them.
Well, “middle class” does not necessarily mean the middle of the distribution. If “upper class” implies inherited wealth and no financial need to work, then “middle class” means people who have to work for a living, but who are above the “working class”. In terms of jobs, it might be ABC1s – people in various grades of managerial, administrative, supervisory, clerical or professional jobs – doctors, lawyers, accountants, bankers, estate agents, engineers, etc. There is also a cultural element.
As you say, for every decile of income, £90k is a good salary, well above the median. Approaching 50% more than the median for the top 10%, and over 2.5 times the overall median.
HMRC publishes centiles of income – the minimum amount of income to get into each slice of 1%. I can’t read on my phone but I suspect £90k gets you into the top 5%.
There are about 35 million taxpayers, about half the total population. And around 900,000 people pay the 45% additional rate income tax. These are the people that MPs meet in London – owners of large private businesses, chief executives of listed plcs, private equity fund managers, partners in Big 4 accounting firms and city law firms, hospital consultants, national journalists. The MPs want to be earning over £150,000. How else can they afford private school fees? But what is the additional value of their defined benefit pension rights?
To suggest that middle class is not the middle does two things.
First, it makes how clear the working class is – an dno one is seeking to represent them in mainstream politics. No wonder Farage did well.
Second, it makes it clear how big the mioddle class is, bevcause the upper class is tibny by your definition.
And if a nurse and a CEO are both middle class then it is clear that we need ebtetr definitions.
But, the data shows, £90,000 is not normal.
What is middle class is a very British (English to be precise) discussion. I (and I think most of Continental born and bred people) would say follow the money to find out. In Britain I was told I was middle class because I was going to the library, theatre and opera and was cooking from scratch when I was barely scraping by financially living in shared accomodation. People who were earning 100k a year living in detached houses in expensive suburbs were described as working class because they were tradesman of some sort (usually builders).
The best way to talk about this is to talk about the income and skip the discussion about what middle and working class means – as you have done. Fewer than 5 per cent of people are paid 90k a year, so 90k a year is obviously an exceptionally good and way over the average and median wage. That is all that has to be said about it.
I found this for German Bundestag MPs: Die Abgeordnetenentschädigung beträgt seit dem 1. Juli 2024 monatlich 11.227,20 Euro. Die Abgeordneten erhalten keine jährlichen Sonderzahlungen. Ihre Abgeordnetenentschädigung ist einkommensteuerpflichtig.
So – they are paid about 10 per cent more than British MPs. Considering the median wage in Germany is more than 10 per cent higher than the British one, the British MPs don’t seem underpaid in the international comparison either.
Thanks
Peter D
I think the bit you miss about our ridiculous class system and how it may or may not be classified, is education. Very few members of the ‘working’ class went to university. Few stayed in formal education beyond school leaving age. Tradesmen learnt their trade through traditional apprenticeships.
Those definitions fail now because of changes in education.
Apprenticeships are a farce: as an example supermarkets offer apprenticeships in butchery. The apprentices never see a live or even whole animal. They learn how to deal with the part-butchered cuts of meat so they can display them properly in their fridges.
Universities are no longer seats of learning and research, they teach students information. As a personal example, I passed A level Spanish in 1974. In 1988 as a post grad at university I invigilated a final year Spanish exam. It was well within my capabilities.
But people are still ‘classified’ according to their level of education. Hence the working class builder in an expensive house in an expensive area.
I’m no sociologist but I’d tentatively suggest that in economic terms the upper class are so wealthy that they and possibly their children and grandchildren need never work again. The wise ones will find suitable careers and fulfilling roles for their descendants because living a carefree life off capital causes all sorts of problems. Successful families can maintain wealth through several generations rather than losing it again.
The working class have hardly any accumulated financial reserves, living from week to week or month to month, just one emergency or unexpected bill away from disaster.
And the middle class are in the middle, probably with enough income to live a reasonably comfortable life and some financial reserves, and able to pass cultural capital on to their children, but not able to stop working. And naturally that is a wide category that can be broken down further.
In the old days, the working class would be private soldiers and NCOs, the upper class would be officers and gentlemen, and there would be a narrow middle class sitting uneasily between the two stools. Nowadays there is a reduced working class (at least in economic terms – almost everyone claims working class roots) and upper class (there are not many HNWIs and UHNWIs) and a wide middle class that spans indeed nurses to CEOs. As and Bs and C1s and probably some C2s too. And MPs want to be classified with the upper end of the middle class that they mix with socially, with the CEOs and bankers not the nurses and teachers. Even though as I suspected an income of £90k already puts them in the top 5% by income.
By any reasonable standard, £90k is a decent income.
Agreed
Meant to link the data on income centiles.
Here it is: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-from-1-to-99-for-total-income-before-and-after-tax
“because they don’t get paid enough to cover the basics of life. ”
And the clear implication of that is that according to her and her colleagues, most of us do not get paid enough to cover the basics. We are all living in poverty. That ought to be pointed out to her and her colleagues, very strongly. I’m not rich, and I’m not poor either, but our household income is well short of 90K.
Good point
James Burn-Murdoch wrote a piece in the FT a couple of years ago showing that “Britain and the US are poor societies with some very rich people”. Still true.
https://www.ft.com/content/ef265420-45e8-497b-b308-c951baa68945
People like Voges and others, like Johnson, who think they need high pay because “they are worth it” are part of the greed problem. The High Pay Centre do much work on this.
I commented the other day I thought £90K too much for back benchers and their pay should be tied to median earnings, with increased expenses if necessary. Here’s the interactive chart which shows that MP’s are well above average – for pay.
More important is how to get MP’s who abide by those apparently “old fashioned” values of honesty, integrity, empathy, public service….
After tax and national insurance It’s what you need to live comfortably in London with 3 kids
So what you are saying is that the vast majoroity of people in Lomndon are struggling
What would you do about that?
A manager for a domiciliary care provider, managing a team of maybe 30 or more carers, gets paid well under half of £90k, maybe even just a third of that. Pay scales in different segments of the economy are now completely out of kilter.
Agreed
And indeed we should also have a conversation about remuneration, productivity, responsibility and just rewards. I feel instinctively (but maybe that needs challenging) that a care home manager is probably on many measures ‘worth’ more than a back-bench MP. Certainly most doctors are by most measures I can think of to justify higher pay.
Part of the problem with executive pay is that we don’t apply to them the kinds of measures that they apply to the workforces they oversee. Basically they seem to be paid for the power they exercise and the ability to schmooze other people paid at high rates who form boards of directors. It all becomes self-referential. A kind of cartel unmoored from real measures of productivity and added value.
If that’s right enough; how to correct it?
I admit I do not follow this:
“Certainly most doctors are by most measures I can think of to justify higher pay.”
I can assure you, care home managers are utterly dependent on GPs
And a good GP works 60 plus hours a week. Most care home managers do not.
Sorry for the unclarity. I was merely meaning that I thought that in terms of responsibilities and work rate, both care home managers and doctors probably are arguably ‘worth’ more than backbench MPs.
I was trying to suggest that maybe we should consider how to value things properly ..
To clarify (I hope).
“Certainly most doctors are [worth more than a backbench MP] -by most measures I can think of to justify higher pay.”
The UK and the US have very different understandings of the term “Middle Class”; it is freighted with implications about lifestyle, not salary.
But, if you are going to “put a number on it” my “inner mathematical nerdyness” demands that it be centred about the median wage. What else?
I suspect this is all about the image that Claire Voges wishes to project about herself.
“Look at me! I think £90k is a rubbish salary. So, what do you think I must make and how good am I?”
I am more interested in the notion that unless we pay more then we will continue to get rubbish politicians…. and we do seem to have a particularly rubbish set at present. It seems to suggest that if you paid £150k a year that there would be a queue of high quality candidates who would put themselves forward….. AND get selected to stand in winnable seats – and that’s the rub. To be selected you have to serve a 20 year apprenticeship as a political researcher/bag carrier etc.. and that is a huge barrier for any normal person… and the idea that a 25 year old will choose a political career over any other in the hope of eventually getting £150k instead of £90k 20 years down the very uncertain road is nonsense.
90K plus expenses is enough.
A great deal to agree with
It’s the absurd ‘apprenticeship’ system that is the problem. We need people who have done 20 years in the real world before going into politics. And £90k is good in the real world.
Agreed.
Would “primaries” help? It allowed Sarah Wollaston to become Tory MP for Totnes.
The key is that they have to be “open” – otherwise you get something akin to the current Tory leadership race…. but it might work.
The real question is do the the Parties realise they need to change and will the Turkeys vote for Christmas because how many of the current crop would survive?
That primary did work.
Was that why it was never repeated?
“…. unless we pay more then we will continue to get rubbish politicians”.
Pay will not do it in Britain. Power (and money goes with power, on way or another) attracts not just “the best” (indeed rarely the “best”), but it does attract the worst. Always. It is never a level playing field in politics. The worst, typically are most likely to survive an uneven contest, and in the digital world ‘truth’ in politics plays almost no part. And the worst are very good at managing the herd of politicians that are too easily led, and lack independence of mind, or the pressure of an easily corrupted culture (and the corruption of our political culture is obvious for all of us to have seen, luridily displayed in Governments, past and present).
I think it was Danny Dorling who pointed out that the biggest income inequality exists in the top 10 per cent
I suspect that skews the perception of comment as the commentators are most in the top 10 per cent
A consultant surgeon of my acquaintance (I do seem to move in some exalted circles despite being at the ‘scum’ end of class warfare) was very happy with the across-the-board 10% salary increase award NHS in Scotland. On about £130k+ a year, the £13k is not a bad increase since its about the entire income of a two-person household in the lower graph 2nd column.
Meanwhile, a nurse gets an increase of £3k – welcome, but not life changing at less than £60 a week. Am I being simplistic that its the % raise calculations that are fuelling inequality by not ‘levelling up’? Surely, its ‘buying power’ that should define the increase – If the nurse gets an extra £60 per week to spend, so should the surgeon? Conversely I suppose the nurse should get the surgeon’s £13k annual raise too!
The thing is, the surgeon often has to cancel operations due to one or other of the theatre team being off ill. It is invariably down the lower end of the pay grade where the gap occurs (though lack of funding has ensured there are no ‘spare’ staff available anymore). Is that due to less incentive if inequitable pay means you are struggling to finance your home while stressed at work? The surgeon can do nothing without the rest of the team.
The idea is revolutionary
I can’t see differentials being eroded as you would wish
There would always be a differential (obviously), but it might begin to change the apparent disparity between the top and the bottom pay scales and might at least show willing to the lower end that the upper end are aware its not always about buying their next Porsche.
I seem to remember a really bad seminar when the trainer tried to explain there is no ‘me’ in ‘team’, (I of course demonstrated there was). How do you fairly allocate the disparate value of team members when if one member is absent the team cannot function?
On the ease with which they can be substituted
I’ll refer you to a bit of my previous comment “The thing is, the surgeon often has to cancel operations due to one or other of the theatre team being off ill”. It seems to me that none of the team are easily replaced at the moment…
https://www.health.org.uk/publications/long-reads/nursing-locally-thinking-globally-uk-registered-nurses-and-their-intentions?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwgfm3BhBeEiwAFfxrG9zitMfpRgQD9rJ47v6VJnorepSkwL635yYuHg0HxqCsMQOvtfuKKhoC3HEQAvD_BwE
https://www.rcn.org.uk/news-and-events/news/uk-inadequate-staffing-levels-nhs-waiting-list-growing-4-times-faster-than-nurse-workforce-161123
https://www.rcoa.ac.uk/news/shortage-1400-nhs-anaesthetists-already-means-more-one-million-surgical-procedures-are-delayed
Of course, these are UK figures. I never miss an opportunity to show how bad NHS figures are. SNHS figures are usually better, or at any rate less bad than England’s
Comparing individual incomes across the entire country is quite meaningless, bordering on economic illiteracy. At the very least the income should be indexed by the local cost of living. It also needs to be somehow indexed by age since it’s normal for young people to start out on a low wage that increases as they age. However, it also ignores the fact that most middle class people are part of middle class households involving spouses, children and even elderly parents. A more meaningful metric would be total household income divided by the number of dependents in that household, weighed according to the cost of living in that particular geographical area. Do you have any data to present like that?
No
So we have to use the data we have
And that data makes my case