STARTING SALARIES PLUMMET FROM £60,000 AS UNI LEAVERS GET DESPERATE
A City columnist has noted that starting salaries at some of the world’s biggest banks – which once offered £35,000 as standard and £60,000 for the brightest sparks – have dropped to as little as £20,000. The reason? You guys are so desperate to find jobs, you’ll work for anything you’re offered.
In Tuesday’s Evening Standard, journalist Simon English wrote about a recent encounter with a City boss on a trading floor:
The 10 guys he has just signed on are red hot. Oxford. Harvard. The Sorbonne. Brains quicker than Usain Bolt. PhDs in being electric. Scary smart. I’m waiting for the punchline, and he’s rolling his eyes impatiently. “You’re supposed to ask me what we are paying them.”
What are you paying them?
“20 grand.”
A month?
“Nope. Annually. And a guaranteed no bonus. This year anyway, after that we’ll see. They might be able to move off their mate’s living-room floor by 2015.” He’s chuckling. Enjoying this more than is seemly.
For the trading boss, that he can pick up such talent so cheaply is clearly a result. At £20k, there’s not much risk to him or his firm even if they can’t cut it. For his more experienced staff, it’s a worrying development. No pay rises this year, chaps – geniuses are going cheap.
According to English:
…these starting salaries are a telling sign of the state of play. A few years ago, a beginner City salary for unremarkable graduates was about £35k. For true maths whizzes with PhDs, it was more like £50k or £60k, with the promise of much more very quickly.
My trader boss admits to being shocked by the number and the quality of the applicants he is now getting for jobs paying an amount of money that makes London barely livable.
While £20,000 is not a terrible graduate salary – many Graduate Foggers are earning far less – we agree that it is a worrying sign of the times. The official stats from the Association of Graduate Recruiters insists that the average graduate starting salary is £26,000 (yes, really). But for how much longer, if even the big banks have started using graduates’ desperation to pick up cheaply what they used to have to pay good money for?
*DO YOU THINK GRADUATE SALARIES ARE DROPPING?
Is it worrying that previously well-paid graduate jobs now pay just £20,000? What does that mean for graduates in industries where staff have always been less well-rewarded? What are you earning – and do you
This is awful. I WISH I knew where they got those stats from ‘£26,000’. I’ve got friends that work at Bain and Deloitte and while they’re in that earning bracket (or above) they’ve been working for a good couple of years, they certainly didn’t start that way. I think most graduates would be happy with £18,000+ (emphasis on the + if you’re in London). It makes sense though doesn’t it? We’re so desperate to be able to eat and pay rent that if a job comes along we’ll take it, nevermind that it barely scratches the surface of the value of our education. It makes me sick but equally what can we do? Cheap graduate labour is how a lot of companies can afford to work these days.
http://www.straightstatistics.org/article/questionable-claims-graduate-pay
The £26,000 figure has come, I’m fairly certain, from the annual Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey (DLHE). This is a survey sent to all graduates approx. six months after graduation. It’s mentioned in the article Derrick has linked to above. It generally get a pretty high return rate from grads, HOWEVER, not everyone chooses to answer the question about how much their earning. Those that do, on the whole, tend to be earning reasonable money. Perhaps understandably, those that are earning minimum wage (or doing an unpaid job) often prefer not to say what they earn (all the data from the survey is treated anonymously however).
Therefore, the £26,000 figure, while completely accurate in terms of the available data, is almost certainly far from being the full picture. Sadly, it’s rare for this wider context to ever be included when the figure is quoted.
Surely paying them £20k is going to be less than minimum wage, considering the hours some of these people work – often 15-hour days or more and they put in some time at weekends too.
I am in a paid internship in the University I graduated from – there were two internships advertised at a grade 4 salary so roughly £17 – 19k per annum. Once we accepted the positions we were then told our salary would only be £13,900.. not as good but it is far better than being on the dole! Yes it may not be the salary I would have liked but I’m sick of hearing people moaning about it. What would you rather have? A crappy wage or be on the dole!?