As was noted by Guardian columnist, Gaby Hinsliff, this week:
Two decades ago, the median recent graduate starting out in a genuine graduate career could expect to earn two and a half times the minimum wage. Now the premium is only 1.6 times minimum wage for median earners, according to the Resolution Foundation, and the lowest earning graduates are fast approaching parity.
This is unsurprising.
The minimum wage for a forty-hour working week is more than £25,000 this coming April (making a mockery of the old age pension in the process). Many graduate training schemes have started on less than that over the last year or two. In my old profession of accountancy, there will be many graduates now looking for a job (and they will be lucky to find one) that will pay little more than the minimum wage despite their being more than £50,000 in debt to be in a position to secure it.
It has been recognised for some time that the hollowing out of the middle class has been a long-term phenomenon in the USA, with a big impact on the electoral prospects of the Democrats, who left behind those graduates who saw no benefit from what that party was doing. We now face something very similar here, as Gaby Hinsliff points out.
Faced with low pay, the continual threat of AI displacing their work, low prospects of buying a house and zero prospect of saving for old age if they ever manage to secure both employment and the chance to ever reach the goal of retirement, having taken the unaddressed issue of climate change into account, many young people quite reasonably look at what UK business is willing to offer them by way of wages, and ask whether the effort of trying to work in the grinding, soulless fashion demanded by employers of new graduates is worthwhile. Is it surprising that some say it is not?
The question is whether this is deliberate on the part of employers? Do they really want to make work unattractive because they really believe they will not need people in the future? Or is it simple exploitation on their part? I think a mix of both is possible.
What I also think likely is that many employers feel indifferent to those facing these dilemmas. The children of the best connected are immune to these threats. For them, there are internships, prospects, and pathways that are pre-mapped to success. I really doubt they do care about those without that privilege. Nothing else can explain why so many young people are so badly treated.
And right now, none of our three largest parties seems to care. And maybe that is the biggest crisis of all because young people left behind are going to get angry.
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Again the issue isnt just wages but prices.
I was able to buy a pretty decent three bed house in a not unreasonable area of Bristol just before my 24th birthday based on a slightly less than average Local Government salary.
Many others of my age and older will tell similar stories, I doubt many will manage it today by middle age if ever with all the implications that has for retirement
I bought a flat in London wehen I was 25 onmy salary alone, and I as just qualified. Sure it was Tooting, when Woolfy Smith lived around the corner, but it was great.
It would take nearly half a milli0on now.
Well, obviously, Labour will say: “We must build more houses on more green belt land!” Wimbledon Common next, sorry, Wombles, but you’re just nimbies – the new target if divisive intra-social hate (along with the elderly). Developers can see the profit to be gained by building in your back yard.
Who is “Woolfy Smith” and what is the “Tooting Liberation Front”?
Yes, I did try on my own to Google and Wikipedia it and found nothing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_Smith
@Richard
THANKS!
Was the show any good??? LOL! LOL!
It’s a long time ago now, and I was not an avid watcher of any television then, or now, but I know it was popular.
Out here I hear a lot of anger.
I hear it against Muslims, immigrants – the biggest group of all I’m afraid, and the disabled, labelled as ‘useless’.
Can you believe that collapse of that canal in Cheshire? I mean, what does that tell you? The symptom of country that does not know how to invest.
Honestly, with the money seemingly dried up, this country will be tinder dry and ready to be set alight and the blame game has already begun.
Never mind the anger – who is going to cop it has already been decided and its ugly.
You may be right
Too many young people are leaving university with humanities degrees which are of little or no value to the majority of employers and yet because they have a degree the expectations of graduates in terms of salary and nature of the job is way too high. Whether one likes it or not is a separate discussion but this is the facts of the matter.
Tell me why a humanities degree is of no relevance?
Precisely please. A reasoned argument of the sort a humanities student could deliver is expected.
AndrewP
It’s a bit like education in general. Why on earth do we expect everyone to be in education to 16 and education or training to 18 when employers need labourers who don’t need an education at all?
You think labourers don’t need an education? Why?
Sorry, Richard, I was being sarcastic. Everyone should have an education to whatever level they aspire to, including a degree in whatever subject they are interested in.
You did surprise me
@Cyndy Hodgson,
Based on your previous post, I got your sarcasm.
I detest the commodification of education and the mentality that something is only worthwhile if it can bring money. If everyone had this attitude, society could not function. Perhaps having a nation of ignorant people is a bad thing? That would explain Conservatives being in power for 14 years as a large portion of their voters have no critical thinking skills.
When I entered the world of work in the last centuries twighlight phase, the first emoyer I took my proper job with had a graduate training programme with 8 weeks of technical training.
Graduates were taken on in relatively large numbers.
The degree wasn’t relevant. The soft skills acquired in getting the degree were.
I don’t know whether there are employers running such comprehensive training schemes for graduates now. Most of the industry I am working in has switched to using labour from abroad and people who are self-taught.
There are some – but the number seems to be declining
I undertook a two year graduate apprenticeship in a company with 2000 trade and graduate apprentices in one factory alone. That was in the 1960s in Manchester.
When I left school at 15 in 1964, with 4 dubious GCEs,I joined a firm in South Wimbledon engaged in the manufacture of a vast range of electrical transformers. A five year apprenticeship with day release resulted in my obtaining an HNC with endorsements a working in the design office. It set me up for the future. After two or three years there was a tacit expectation that you may leave. I once asked a director about the sense in this and his reply was that if all the other company’s did this it provided a pool of trained individuals that could share their skills across the industry.
Roll forward to 1974 and joined the Engineering Division of the Independent Broadcasting Authority. The selection process was thorough as it had to be. Because the skills and education was not being taught elsewhere, the first year was on-site training coupled with three terms at Plymouth Polytechnic to obtain a Diploma in Advanced Television.Techniques. The scheme turned out very skilled engineers.
Does anyone do this now?
Not like that, no.
I ran a training office as an accountant. But, it seems many businesses now think people should arrive trained. Of course they cannot be.
Anecdote to start. I have 2 sons. The older, just over 50, had a year at Sheffield Hallam doing Sports Management, and left because he felt more intelligent than those teaching him. He became a builder and is doing very well. Younger son, 42, did a year on a Business Management degree course, really didn’t like it, gave it up, became a gardener. It was difficult to start with, but he now has a flourishing business.
Maybe the view of university and a degree as the only path to a well-paid life has past its sell-by date. If the only people who went to university were really interested in their subject, there would be far fewer degrees, which might then have rarity value.
This emphasis on paper qualifications is likely to be related to neoliberalism. It’s meant that we have an over-supply of graduates in some subjects (though not STEM), and a shortage of builders and other practical workers.
Exploitation is the name of the game. We may have made slavery illegal but wage slavery has certainly replaced it with a vengeance. Now the fan of the middle class is being hit we may see a surprising back lash as happened in France under Loius 16.
Are they though? Are young people going to get angry? Why is it taking them so long?
There was a bit of a moment back in 2019 when the phrase “OK boomer” suddenly got popular. I thought that might be the start of something, but it died down, and the issue of intergenerational unfairness has fallen back below the radar.
I suppose these changes happen gradually enough that people don’t necessarily realise the unfairness of it, but I’m very conscious that, although I’m not old enough to be a boomer, I was in the last year group to make it through university with no tuition fees. But even that change was phased in. My younger brother paid a little bit 2 years later. My younger sister paid quite a lot more 4 years later. Nowadays it’s nuts. Students are signing on to spend the rest of their lives paying off their tuition fees. Completely unfair. They should be rioting in the streets.
Their parents should have been rioting in the streets with them and before them. This is a story of betrayal, and kids need look no further than their families for complicity by inaction. When we all have family and friends affected by govt policy that we countenance by inaction, we’re all guilty, me included. Those riots should be attended by all of us, until things change, but they will not happen, and the pain will get worse, and for more and more people.
We need to reinvent democracy for the long term – the legacy this generation leaves the.next. The ‘social contract’. As politics and its support systems have failed to look beyond the next electoral cycle or even the end of next week we have a growing part of the population who are exhausted from the endless pressures of surviving in the present. That leaves little or no energy for imagining the future.
Change comes. We are at the end of a forty years cycle (neoliberalism) that has fostered the cult of the individual over community. That cycle is coming to an end, with extreme concentrations of wealth. But what follows is uncertain.
I know it is primarily young people in this scenario, but the issues are also true of anyone whose pathway has disrupted by illness; physical, mental, acute, chronic, or a mixture.
In some ways, finding yourself in the same forced precarity, but as a mature adult, comes with the additional cruelty of being viewed by those in power as suspicious for not following the traditional script, for having struggled to meet the expectations of normalcy, or for daring to strive for a comfortable life once recovering into stability.
The debts are no less onerous, the jobs no more available, and the pathways no less cruel when there’s more years of life behind you. Realistically, the ‘advantages’ are less time to keep fighting, and more barriers due to the questions of why you’re not ‘further along’.
Most revolutions and rebellions have been driven by discontented, well educated young people.
Any sane ruling class would ensure that cohort is bought into the system.
What I do not understand is if there is a shortage of skilled labour for the building trades in the UK, why are there people with building trade skills unemployed in the UK or not working their field?
My friends in Norfolk have become close to two Ukrainian refugee families. There are three males between the two families and each male has at least ten years experience in the building trades and proper “papers” to work in the UK. One is a master drywall-plasterer, one is a brick layer and one worked his whole Ukrainian career as a concrete finisher. These guys are presently working as Amazon drivers. WHY???
If the three Ukrainians were lining in Lee County Florida or Orange County Florida, they could go to work tomorrow (with full benefits and premium pay) and work for the next three years non-stop. They would be begging for a vacation after working 50-60 hours a week (weather permitting) as all the building trades do in Lee County Florida or Orange County Florida
Prejudice, in a word.
What I do not understand is if there is a shortage of skilled labour for the building trades in the UK, why are there people with building trade skills unemployed in the UK or not working their field?
My friends in Norfolk have become close to two Ukrainian refugee families. There are three males between the two families and each male has at least ten years experience in the building trades and proper “papers” to work in the UK. One is a master drywall-plasterer, one is a brick layer and one worked his whole Ukrainian career as a concrete finisher. These guys are presently working as Amazon drivers. WHY???
If the three Ukrainians were lining in Lee County Florida or Orange County Florida, they could go to work tomorrow (with full benefits and premium pay) and work for the next three years non-stop. They would be begging for a vacation after working 50-60 hours a week (weather permitting) as all the building trades do in Lee County Florida or Orange County Florida.
Prejudice, in a word
I must confess that I find it very easy to dismiss Gaby Hinsliff, as a writer who easily suffers a fit of the vapours when anything the threatens the status quo is proposed, but as I read her article in today’s Guardian, I found myself nodding in agreement – until, that is, she opined that “Frustrated wannabe elites can morph into angry counter-elites”. And of course her fear is that Reform could be the political beneficiary of this discontent.
Having played her part in the propaganda battle to clear the Labour party of the possibility of providing a better alternative to the likes of Reform, I hope like-minded pundits and public thinkers are happy with where we are and how we got here.
Another good Grauniad article
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/03/young-families-starter-homes-uk-housing-crisis
obvious. Mass population growth plus so many degrees are worthless and irrelevant. Hence can’t afford a pad. In bristol a one bed can cost £2k pm Granddaughter will graduate with latin and classical studies from St A. what can she do
I qualified in 3 languages ,economics and management plus others
And 60 years ago my first house cost 2 years of my wages
As posted before from my teaching of 6th formers, less want to go to university than ever. A few -some with my advice-are taking a year out (I tell them to work the winter, travel Europe on a student type card or similar, many have never been outside package holiday enclaves), others are looking at trades. Many of them are horribly familiar with Farage and Reform (via social media), but no other perspective. You have to realise that the government list for extremism (Prevent) has socialism and eco interests as reportable. BTW trades in UK were wrecked by privatisation of FE colleges in 1993, they promptly dropped almost all trade courses for travel & tourism etc, cost much less and clear up ££ for management BMWs.
Much to agree with.
More equality looks a bit like this.
No matter how much you invest in your earning potential you’ll never be paid much more than someone who hasn’t bothered for whatever reason.
Now all we need is to bring down the wages of the so-called elite so we are all paid according to the new (higher) minimum wage.
Young people today are not revolting as my generation did across the western world in the 1960s because they are afraid of the consequences in a way we were not. I left uni with an arts degree and half a dozen career job offers. I could have bought a flat in a downmarket part of London for 2-3x my salary a couple of years after graduation. I could speak freely on any subject without risk of persecution, loss of job, or arrest. I was confident and optimistic, as were most young people I knew. Life was getting better across the western world.
Today, there are far more graduates chasing far fewer career jobs. Any expression of opposition to the prevailing orthodoxy can have dire consequences. Calling for peace or an end to environmental desecration can lead to a jail sentence. Indiscretions on social media are censored and/or used to ruin reputations and career prospects. Nothing escapes the eye of the authorities. Even mild resistance to government policy is impossible without detection. The activities of the state are shrouded in ever more impenetrable secrecy; the citizen is subject to 1984-level surveillance.
How much worse things have to get before popular anger reaches critical levels I have no idea. But oppression of the masses by powerful elites has a long history (most of history, in fact). The power gap between the rulers and ruled has probably never been wider than it is today. A serf with his pitchfork had more of a chance against the armour and swords of the powerful than a rebel has today against the electronics and weaponry of our rulers.
Much to agree with
This is a recipe for mass emigration by under-30 graduates.
The Sunlit Uplands of Brexit look more like Ireland in the 1970’s: a backwater that ambitious people leave behind.
And yet UK is still a major economy. How?