Job situation in UK

[Guest boa]

Where does this information come from ? Seriously. Did they mention the areas where unemployment is 3.5% or just the bad places ? I have many friends in the UK that know nothing of this 80% rise in utilities bills :laugh:Did you tell your family that unemployment in far North Queensland, Cairns etc is 12.5% ? Probably not as it is irrelevant. What is it about the British that want to make things sound worse than they are ? I just don't get it.

 

i have heard off family it is grim, no jobs, 13% unemployment in places, people in jobs not getting pay rises and over last few years elec and gas has gone up a whopping 80%. utility bills now around $3000 per annum over there. Just phone about employment there. The only potential areas for work in IT is in telecoms in the broadband infrastructure as that is where the jobs are if any. The UK is investing in this technology.

[pablo]

Where does this information come from ? Seriously. Did they mention the areas where unemployment is 3.5% or just the bad places ? I have many friends in the UK that know nothing of this 80% rise in utilities bills :laugh:Did you tell your family that unemployment in far North Queensland, Cairns etc is 12.5% ? Probably not as it is irrelevant. What is it about the British that want to make things sound worse than they are ? I just don't get it.

I can only speak for my trade(bricklaying)and my area of work(north west)

Ive been bricklaying nearly 30 years,and im telling yer that there has never in all that time been a lull like there is now,never!

The most ive ever been out of work is a cpl of weeks untill this yr,4 months work out of the last 12 isnt "wanting to make things sound worse than they are" mucker,thats fact!

All our savings gone,borrowed money on top of this as well,for "some" that is the way it is here at the moment,and i speak for the vast majority of my mates as well.

[Peach]

I have many friends in the UK that know nothing of this 80% rise in utilities bills :laugh:

 

UK utility bills have had a 100% increase since 2004. Ofgem proposals could send energy bills spiralling | Money | The Guardian , faster than anywhere else in the western world http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/gas/4447673/Gas-bills-in-UK-rising-faster-than-elsewhere-in-western-world.html..

[Guest siamsusie]

UK utility bills have had a 100% increase since 2004. Ofgem proposals could send energy bills spiralling | Money | The Guardian , faster than anywhere else in the western world..

Thank you Peach, I noticed it dreadfully. I am not interested on whose friends said what, it is what comes through your letter box that matters and tbh I find the gas/electricity bills are horrendous! in the UK! :wubclub: Susie

[Guest boa]

Pablo, my post wasn't in response to anything you said.

[pablo]

Pablo, my post wasn't in response to anything you said.

No i know that mucker,but honestly it IS the worst ive ever known it at the moment.

Im not going OTT,all the bricklayers i know are out of work,im fed up of ringing firms,its just pointless at the mo,but i do it anyway,no probs boa,wasnt being sarky or anything.

[freebo]

Like Freebo I'm an IT freelancer.

 

2009 was dire. In the first half of the year everyone was panicking about it being the end of the world, and there was little recruitment. If anything moved then it moved slowly.

 

Things improved in the last quarter, but I still don't think that they're great.

 

However, if you're in finance then it's a different matter. The banks are paying similar rates to what they did in 2007. The real kicker is that you can't work for them without prior experience in that sector.

 

My inclination would be to put off a move back to the UK for six or twelve months and see if things improve. I don't think that the Oz economy is necessarily great, but it's probably better than the UK.

 

Agreed, the IT market may have improved a little since 2009 (I've been on the same contract since Oct, hopefully my last in the UK so I haven't been actively looking), it still seems pretty grim though.

[Guest boa]

That's OK I just thought you had assumed what I had said was aimed at you. It has obviously affected certain sectors more than others with the building trades being hardest hit.

 

This was for last year and they have gone up again since then and due to rise again next year.

Anguish as electricity prices set to rise again

 

No i know that mucker,but honestly it IS the worst ive ever known it at the moment.

Im not going OTT,all the bricklayers i know are out of work,im fed up of ringing firms,its just pointless at the mo,but i do it anyway,no probs boa,wasnt being sarky or anything.

[KIRK AND CO]

that dont pay much here if you work for a boss:wink:

Hi are you in the trade there ? if so could I pick your brains on work in oz ? thanks.

[KIRK AND CO]

I'm also curious, had you not been planning a move to Oz (and thus had something to save for) what would you otherwise have done with the extra money?

I would of invested into my lab & attempt to grow the buisiness without loans. I do know loans are a good idea if you did go bust but I have always liked the thought of knowing it is mine not the banks.

[Guest treesea]

Hi

 

This is mainly aimed at people in the UK

 

Am considering moving back and have heard the UK in coming out of recession but has this had any effect on jobs. In particular in the IT industry?

 

Thanks

 

All I can say is I am glad I work in Healthcare. I wouldn't like to work in any other field as far as job security goes, though even job conditions in Health aren't wonderful. As long as it pays the bills I reckon.

 

I used to work in IT, but financial systems rather than health care. What I found when we first came back is getting work in an around London was timeconsuming but eventually you could get something - I got offers from companies in Reading and Bracknell, but OH refused point blank to live in either. That was 2004.

 

Roll onto 2010. Cable and Wireless have gone, Siemens aren't hiring and are even closing down one of their centres in England. BT are "kind of in the market but not really" - my translation of that is if you have very specialised skills and approach them directly, they might be interested. The banks? Forget it. HSBC maybe, if you have long banking experience.

 

IT in healthcare? The NHS are still hiring, even up here in Scotland. Pretty low wages though, by IT standards. £30k to £35k p.a. for a project manager. And a lot of it is temporary hire, on 12 month contracts. It's the usual thing with them though - as long as you are willing to work anywhere in Britain, have healthcare experience and on a fixed term contract you might get something. Though, having said that, one of our neighbours has a cousin working at BMI, a private health company, down near London somewhere, and he says they are not hiring at the moment. He was also saying everyone is sitting tight, holding onto their jobs for dear life.

 

Beware some of the foreign owned IT companies. One of my friends works for Tetley Tea in their IT department. Here's somewhere out West London way. They're owned by Tata. He tells me that they bring over Indians and pay them minimum wage, and then expect the locals to train them up. They had a couple of contractors who haven't been renewed at the end of December and have moved on, one to another job but the other one is still looking.

 

In spite of the time or hassles it might take to get an IT job, if you want to come back, my advice is just to come back. Woofyhugger, I'd been away over 30 years before I came back. The most I had ever worked in the UK in all that time was 3 months, on a brief stint back here in the 80s. Work isn't everything. I've never earned as much as I earned in Australia, in any of the five plus years that I've been back. I couldn't give a toss. Home is where the heart is. Just get Oz citizenship first, in case you get back here and discover it isn't what you wanted after all.

 

Coming back to the UK isn't the same as going out to Australia, a strange country, sight unseen, for the first time. It's probably a lot easier, and cheaper than you think once you are on the ground. If you pay six months rent in advance, you can rent whatever you can afford. If you are not sure where you want to live, take a couple of months out and look around. We planned on London, where I'm from, took one look and thought "I don't think so." Too used to beautiful (Sydney, 5 years) and well run (Melbourne, 11 years) cities to put up with what we saw there. The only place I saw in London that I thought "I could live here" was Herne Hill, but couldn't afford it.

 

And if you get back, decide to go green, don't fancy city life, and want to forget about the horrors of working in an office, then I recommend Knaresborough (Yorkshire) and Crantock (Cornwall). Both great places to live, imho :-)

[Guest Andy]

Building site down the road affering chippies £60 a day apparantly, i have never known a chippie work for that sort of money, things are dire and will not improve this year imo, the reason i say that is because of the election and the tax rises that will come in straight afterwards, vat up to 20% will not help either, we are in it for the long haul!

[Guest treesea]

Building site down the road affering chippies £60 a day apparantly, i have never known a chippie work for that sort of money, things are dire and will not improve this year imo, the reason i say that is because of the election and the tax rises that will come in straight afterwards, vat up to 20% will not help either, we are in it for the long haul!

 

I realise £60 a day is not a lot of money, -and more so if it isn't full time - but if you're self employed, which presumably most chippies are, and have a family, especially if your spouse is a stay at home mum/dad, then that qualifies you for a whole host of top ups. Working tax credit, housing benefit/mortgage interest payments, council tax credit, child tax credit, national health exemption cards.

 

There's a big building project going on out in East Lothian at the moment. So we're at the market, and one of these guys shows up and we start chatting, so he is telling me his family is with him and he's a brickie, working for minimum wage through one of the subbies. So I said to him "Do you realise that the minimum wage here means you are officially living in poverty? Have you claimed all the tax rebates and benefits you are entitled to?" It turns out he's claimed everything under the sun, because he had a mate on the same site who showed him how to claim. Most of it's online.

 

But there's a guy with him, also subcontracting on the same site, a local, doing a different job, something to do with concrete mixing or pouring, who gets £7 an hour. He says it really annoys him how immigrants come over and get all this help while he hasn't got a penny to his name, three kids, living hand to mouth on subsistence wages, and doesn't even have an ISA. His wife is at home with three young children, two at primary school and he doesn't even claim child tax credits because he "doesn't believe in benefits". Aaargh! So I said to this other guy: "I claim child tax credit. You're prepared to donate your hard earned tax and NI contributions to a stranger's family - mine - ahead of your own? Thanks and good luck with that. There's no such thing as a benefit if you are already paying tax - they're all tax rebates. Thank you for the donation, but I think you're mad."

 

If you're working and paying taxes, then any kind of "benefit" is a tax rebate, acknowledging the fact that you don't earn enough in our ever lower wage economy, so returning some of YOUR hard earned money, at least a quarter of which you have paid in income tax and NI contributions, to you.

 

Six months go by and our Polish friend turns up again, this time with another Polish workmate. He tells me "That guy you talked to - my friend. He's very happy now. He went online. He got an extra £80 a week. He even got free school meals."

 

It's a dire comment on our economy when even local building workers get so poorly paid they need a top up of that magnitude to support their families. But it is what it is - welcome to low wage Britain. The least we can all do is claim all the tax back that we are entitled to.

[Guest Andy]

I realise £60 a day is not a lot of money, -and more so if it isn't full time - but if you're self employed, which presumably most chippies are, and have a family, especially if your spouse is a stay at home mum/dad, then that qualifies you for a whole host of top ups. Working tax credit, housing benefit/mortgage interest payments, council tax credit, child tax credit, national health exemption cards.

 

There's a big building project going on out in East Lothian at the moment. So we're at the market, and one of these guys shows up and we start chatting, so he is telling me his family is with him and he's a brickie, working for minimum wage through one of the subbies. So I said to him "Do you realise that the minimum wage here means you are officially living in poverty? Have you claimed all the tax rebates and benefits you are entitled to?" It turns out he's claimed everything under the sun, because he had a mate on the same site who showed him how to claim. Most of it's online.

 

But there's a guy with him, also subcontracting on the same site, a local, doing a different job, something to do with concrete mixing or pouring, who gets £7 an hour. He says it really annoys him how immigrants come over and get all this help while he hasn't got a penny to his name, three kids, living hand to mouth on subsistence wages, and doesn't even have an ISA. His wife is at home with three young children, two at primary school and he doesn't even claim child tax credits because he "doesn't believe in benefits". Aaargh! So I said to this other guy: "I claim child tax credit. You're prepared to donate your hard earned tax and NI contributions to a stranger's family - mine - ahead of your own? Thanks and good luck with that. There's no such thing as a benefit if you are already paying tax - they're all tax rebates. Thank you for the donation, but I think you're mad."

 

If you're working and paying taxes, then any kind of "benefit" is a tax rebate, acknowledging the fact that you don't earn enough in our ever lower wage economy, so returning some of YOUR hard earned money, at least a quarter of which you have paid in income tax and NI contributions, to you.

 

Six months go by and our Polish friend turns up again, this time with another Polish workmate. He tells me "That guy you talked to - my friend. He's very happy now. He went online. He got an extra £80 a week. He even got free school meals."

 

It's a dire comment on our economy when even local building workers get so poorly paid they need a top up of that magnitude to support their families. But it is what it is - welcome to low wage Britain. The least we can all do is claim all the tax back that we are entitled to.

Good post.

There,s no doubt in my mind that cheap foreign labour over the last 10 or so years has driven down the day rate of home grown tradesmen. How can a chippie/brickie who for example has a 150k mortgage a couple of kids and a car and van compete with a polish/lithuanian who has no mortgage here and can hole up with 10 of his mates and pay next to nothing in rent? I realise that the immigrant workers are doing whats best for them and its all perfectly legal but that does not help the British chippie/brickie!

[Guest LukeSkywalker]

Hi

 

This is mainly aimed at people in the UK

 

Am considering moving back and have heard the UK in coming out of recession but has this had any effect on jobs. In particular in the IT industry?

 

Thanks

 

What part of IT?

What location in the UK?

 

It is a very mixed bag out there. Same in the USA and same in Oz I believe (at least i have found it so).

[Guest The Ropey HOFF]

Hi everyone,

 

I have read in the news that there is a record 48,000 house reposessions in the the uk in the last year, thats untold misery for so many families and a Labour MP who fiddled his expenses thinks its a good thing. Why is this happening when there are jobs available in the uk, i think its because the jobs situation is chronic and the jobs that anyone is getting at the moment are few and far between and the wages and conditions are not really worth having unless your desperate and here in the uk millions of unemployed people are desperate and alot of them are losing their homes. Is it the same in Australia are house reposessions at record levels and making headline news.

 

jim

[kernow43]

Hi everyone,

 

I have read in the news that there is a record 48,000 house reposessions in the the uk in the last year, thats untold misery for so many families and a Labour MP who fiddled his expenses thinks its a good thing. Why is this happening when there are jobs available in the uk, i think its because the jobs situation is chronic and the jobs that anyone is getting at the moment are few and far between and the wages and conditions are not really worth having unless your desperate and here in the uk millions of unemployed people are desperate and alot of them are losing their homes. Is it the same in Australia are house reposessions at record levels and making headline news.

 

jim

It could be quite bad here also, a lot of repossessions are due to people borrowing more than they can afford,they all want a swimming pool, home theatre, instead of buying a basic home then add to it when they can afford to. I don't feel sorry for these types, but I do for the battler who buys a basic home then maybe lose his job or illness, then gets his home taken from him.

[Life on easy street]

.

What is the job situation like in Buckinghamshire?

[Bod]

.

What is the job situation like in Buckinghamshire?

 

 

Don't know but it's not very good in Essex.

[koala77]

I know the job situation in the UK is lousy at the moment, but I wouldn't say that it's all rosy over here. The Australian media are just far better at boosting themselves up and are far less doom and gloom than Britain.

 

As I mentioned in one of my other posts, I'm an Aussie that's been back here for nearly 10 months now. I spent the first three months in a minimum wage part time job, then four months in a highly paid job in my field. However that came to an abrupt end and now I am out of work, deeply out of pocket and panicking. I've applied for 26 jobs in the past 3 weeks here in Melbourne and been inundated with no thanks. I've applied for 5 interstate where family live, all no thanks too. However I've applied for 2 jobs in the UK in my field - and surprisingly both have resulted in telephone interviews. So now I am packing up and going back. After 15 years of paying UK taxes, NI and never claiming more than a week's UK benefits (and that was only because I'd been unemployed for 4 months in the 2001 downturn and was desperate, but then found work in a shop at minimum wage for 3 months until something in my field came up) I feel that UK is clearly more welcoming to a highly skilled person. I have worked mostly in roles that have been about generating economic benefit for areas and creating jobs - and I am good at it, and qualify as a highly-skilled migrant (even if I didn't have residency through ancestry).

 

My thoughts on Britain's job situation - and I could be very wrong or just plain idealistic (and as a non British-born person, some of these views are contradictory considering I myself am a migrant) - I think Britain's policies in the past ten years have not been favourable. Greed and wealth have taken over. The EU has killed Britain. Take a look at farming, minimum wage jobs, and other sectors. All EU policies that have killed traditional industry. The immigration of EU residents easily into Britain's minimum wage jobs in hospitality, tourism, building etc has meant what industry Britain has is supporting non British born people.

 

First time buyers have over-stretched themselves due to rising prices - largely as a result of people going into buy-to-let and investing as they can earn more growth than if their cash was in the bank. The government can't tax those people now on second homes because it will cause further crashes in the market. If they'd wised up to this trend in the beginning, perhaps they could have stopped unsustainable property price growth. The same thing has happened in Australia - one friend of mine bought her first house at 21 with parent's help, and has since gone on to buy four more with the equity. She has a property portfolio worth $1 million, that she paid less than $300,000 for. My sister who is early 20s just struggled to buy her first home in Australia in a rubbish area for $350,000 which is nearly 4.5 times the multiple of her joint income.

 

Perhaps governments should have encouraged more cash saving rather than property investment? Or maybe they never should have sold off social housing?

 

And finally, outsourcing to other countries. That is what is now killing manufacturing, contact centres and IT in Britain. Companies want profits for shareholders - efficiences to create profits can usually be found in off-shoring. Hey no NI bill, no PAYE, no cumbersome H&S laws and employee legislation - and cheaper labour. I once had to interview 400 employees from a call centre to get their views on the training they were being given by their employer as part of a separation package. This well known bank were outsourcing their call centre to India and therefore would be putting 400 workers in Britain into the employment market all at once with only call-centre skills (and all call-centres were moving to India). Consequently the new skills that they were being taught in admin were hardly going to help in an area with little industry. Maybe the UK government needs to start creating some more taxes - particularly on banks - that tax profits if off-shoring has been used when there were perfectly good potential employees in Britain. Immigration in Britain says for sponsorship that you can only employ a foreigner who needs a sponsored visa if no UK citizen can do the job - the same should be said about off-shoring.

 

And while on the topic of taxes - there should be a HUGE tax on bonuses above a certain figure!

 

OK, rant over :arghh::wink:

[koala77]

.

What is the job situation like in Buckinghamshire?

 

Depends what industry - if you're in building, Bucks is doing OK because the bankers are getting bonuses again!

[mrsindecision]

Also I am tracking job market for my area of work ( marketing/communications) and there seems to be loads advertised at the moment all paying very good wages in UK ($40k +++). OH going back to NHS where there is plenty of jobs and wages are better than here so overall from where I am sitting - it looks ok. We earned a joint wage of $110k here last year and will be likely to be earning at least £90k there (which was what we were earning before we left). I think your points about EU are very valid and obviously many industries have been hit badly but all of our friends in Uk are doing ok. They are however people who are pretty sensible financially and werent overstretched in the first place. Cost of living here is horrendous just paid $600 for a filling and hygienist treatment at dentist. I think we were paying £30 per month for our private dentist cover in UK. A trip to the Doctors will cost you every time and I know people who avoid both dentists and doctors because they cant afford it. Our son is diabetic and despite having private health cover the cost of his meds are high and paying for regular consultations at $90 a pop soon adds up.

[kernow43]

Also I am tracking job market for my area of work ( marketing/communications) and there seems to be loads advertised at the moment all paying very good wages in UK ($40k +++). OH going back to NHS where there is plenty of jobs and wages are better than here so overall from where I am sitting - it looks ok. We earned a joint wage of $110k here last year and will be likely to be earning at least £90k there (which was what we were earning before we left). I think your points about EU are very valid and obviously many industries have been hit badly but all of our friends in Uk are doing ok. They are however people who are pretty sensible financially and werent overstretched in the first place. Cost of living here is horrendous just paid $600 for a filling and hygienist treatment at dentist. I think we were paying £30 per month for our private dentist cover in UK. A trip to the Doctors will cost you every time and I know people who avoid both dentists and doctors because they cant afford it. Our son is diabetic and despite having private health cover the cost of his meds are high and paying for regular consultations at $90 a pop soon adds up.

I think you are going to the wrong doctors.$90?

[koala77]

Which state are you in MrsInDecision? I'm in Marcoms too, but can't get anything in Melbourne - they don't value UK experience apparently! In my particularly industry, I've never not been shortlisted for an interview (sorry if that sounds arrogant but normally I only apply for roles I am qualified/experienced for), yet here I barely get any interest. I applied for one that was a job I could walk in the park, but they interviewed 15 people and I wasn't one of them - said I wasn't experienced enough in how it's done in Australia.

 

I was on £43K on last job in UK, and got about the same here in my job I've just done - although with exchange rate it worked out about £50K, but what they wanted was totally unrealistic hence why I was axed and they now can't find anyone. They want a top director (ideally male) that just won't work for them on that salary - and I'm not sure what they could bring to the role!!

[mrsindecision]

Which state are you in MrsInDecision? I'm in Marcoms too, but can't get anything in Melbourne - they don't value UK experience apparently! In my particularly industry, I've never not been shortlisted for an interview (sorry if that sounds arrogant but normally I only apply for roles I am qualified/experienced for), yet here I barely get any interest. I applied for one that was a job I could walk in the park, but they interviewed 15 people and I wasn't one of them - said I wasn't experienced enough in how it's done in Australia.

 

I was on £43K on last job in UK, and got about the same here in my job I've just done - although with exchange rate it worked out about £50K, but what they wanted was totally unrealistic hence why I was axed and they now can't find anyone. They want a top director (ideally male) that just won't work for them on that salary - and I'm not sure what they could bring to the role!!

 

I am in Qld but work across Aus mainly in Melbourne and Sydney ( specialise in education sector). Have had same experience and face it daily as a consultant where they dont like it if you know too much and then blame you if it goes wrong cos they ignored your advice. Am sooooooo over it. I was on £55k in UK ran two departments and had a PA. Here I am being treated like a PA by my boss doing lots of basic admin and also providing high level consultancy that he is charging out at three times what i am earning - but compared to wages where I live ( sunshine coast) it's the best i am going to get. OH facing the same in his job with Qld Health. My son at uni went to a maths lecture where he said they were covering grade 7 material and most of the class couldnt get it which he has seen again and again in Physics and Chemistry etc.. so on the whole we're a bit p'd off with it all and ready to tackle the chavs and the weather for some professional development, increased opportunity for our kids and a damn good sense of humour.