Roughly £40,000.

I'm on £15 an hour. £42,000. £17,000 a year.

And I'm on £40,000 a year.

I think last year about £27,000 on tax return.

Can you tell me what your salary will be if you're a job? £36,000.

There are a lot of places you do go into that will say they're not advertising but they'll take people on.

If you go in and say I really want a job they'll go alright we'll see what we can do.

The cost of living in Brighton is quite high.

I'm living at home for a year person so...

Parents are giving the thumbs up.

Hi everyone, hope you're all well and welcome to a new episode of Easy English.

Today I wanted to ask the question about jobs.

I wanted to know what people do to make a living in the UK, how they train for that job, if they even have a university degree, what advice they have for getting on the job market, and also the taboo question, how much do they make?

Before we get started, if you're a regular viewer of Easy English but you're not yet a subscriber, then quickly hit the button below.

Here we go.

What do you do for a living?

I work in tech.

And whereabouts is your work?

So I actually work remotely.

I live in London in Chiswick.

We have an office in Euston opposite Google.

But predominantly I work remotely out of Chiswick.

Okay.

And then can I ask, what is your salary?

Yeah, sure.

So I make a split between base salary and then commission as well.

So I make £65,000 from my base salary and then another £40,000 on top of that.

Could you tell me what you do for a living?

Yeah, I've just graduated so I'm just about to start a job working in finance in London.

Congratulations.

And whereabouts in London will you be working?

In Stratford.

Okay, great.

And then if you don't mind me asking, can you tell me what your salary will be of your job? £36,000.

I'm a secondary school teacher, local, and I teach physics.

So yeah, that's kind of the...

In Brighton.

In Brighton, yeah. And then would you mind, if you don't mind, me telling me how much you earn in your salary?

Roughly £40,000.

Okay.

I am Head of Geography, so I'm a secondary school teacher.

Could you tell me what your salary is?

I don't know.

I'm a cleaner.

I work on building sites.

So I go into a building, like the new builds, and rip up all corex and all the packaging on everything and then we clean it thoroughly.

And then we go back again and we do another clean.

Yeah, and then I do intertenancies.

So when people move out of houses, we go and clean them.

And students...

Yeah, you must be busy.

Student accommodations, they're the messiest, but yeah, we go in and we clean it all and make it right.

It varies.

I'm on £15 an hour, but it depends on how many hours we do.

I can earn like £140 a day or...

It all depends.

It depends.

If it's an intertenancy, it's less.

So it all varies.

You get busy periods probably, like end of terms and stuff.

Yeah, definitely.

The building site's more money than intertenancies, but it varies.

I work for Surrey Farm Rescue Service in the control room up at Surrey, covering east, west and Surrey.

Oh, wow.

Cool.

Nice job.

Yeah.

And can I ask for free to say no, how much do you make in your salary? £42,000.

Do you want to go first because it's boring?

So, both work in recruitment.

I work in the back office doing onboarding and compliance and reading through contacts.

I work for a German-based satellite manufacturer.

So I hire engineers who essentially design hardware for space.

I'm on an internal salary and I'm on about £17,000 a year.

And then, yeah, I get a kind of delivery commission bonus at the end of the year as well.

I've got you now.

So it's based on the hires I make for the company.

Nice.

And I'm on £40,000 a year.

I'm a painter and decorator.

Last year I had a gap of three months.

I chose not to work for three months.

I think last year it was about £27,000 on tax return.

I am a psychologist.

And my next question, feel free to tell me to bugger off.

Would you mind telling me your salary as a psychologist?

Yes.

To bugger off.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

No, no, it's good.

No, I'm not telling you my money.

That's good because in some countries it's completely fine to say salary.

Yeah.

But in Britain it's a bit more of a taboo now. Yes.

I think in Britain it is a bit of a taboo.

There is a lot of assumption and that's why I just rather keep it private.

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Now back to the video.

What would you say, if someone was to try to get a job in London, would be a minimum salary they should be looking to get?

I think minimum, if you want to have a nice life in London, but you're sensible, is probably £40,000, £45,000 I would say is the bare minimum.

Would you say that is a sustainable amount of money to live in the UK or specifically London maybe?

I would say in London it's pushing it, it's just about maybe scrape by, but I'm living at home for a year first.

Clever.

Parents are giving the thumbs up.

Okay, so then what would you think would be an acceptable wage to live and survive in London and enjoy a nice life?

I think £40,000 a year as a single person, you can live a reasonable life, but that probably wouldn't be enough to get you on the housing ladder or save much of the future or anything like that.

I think around that value, around £40,000 is what you'd be looking for, for a nice life and buying things that you want I guess.

If you're coming to become a teacher, your starting salary is going to be mid £20,000, mid-20s probably for starting out as a newly qualified teacher.

I've been teaching for 20 odd years, so you need to look for something that is going to give you a good salary so that you can enjoy living by the sea.

How much would you say would be, in Brighton and the UK, what would be a decent wage that means you could live a happy life, if you lived on your own as well? £30,000 a year I would say.

What would be a good wage that you'd have to earn to live a nice life in your opinion?

Gosh, I don't know, what would you say?

I don't really know. £30,000 plus?

Yeah, plus.

For Brighton?

Yeah, plus.

Oh, probably £40,000.

Okay.

It's just enough.

And is that the case across the whole of the UK do you think?

That £40,000 is a good minimum?

I think it's an average pay for working full-time.

Okay.

Rent and bills in a two-bed flat was about £2,200 a month.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

So, £40,000 plus is kind of a bit on the bread line.

Yeah.

Probably.

And how does that compare to the rest of the UK if you understand?

Well, we've got friends that live up in Sheffield and my friend's managed to buy a house on her own, on her family.

So that's the £200,000.

That's the £200,000.

And it's a three-bedder.

Yeah.

I can feel the resentment.

But you pay to live down here, don't you?

Yeah.

I mean, it's amazing, it's by the sea, Brighton's got such a good social thing going on.

Living in the south of England is super expensive.

Did you have to get a degree?

Yes.

Did you study for it?

Yes.

Specifically psychology?

Yes.

Both in Italy and here.

And is that necessary to be a psychologist?

To be a qualified clinical psychologist, yes.

What did you do in order to get your job, like education-wise?

Did you go to university?

Yeah, I studied psychology, which I think helps for my role because it helps me understand myself and also people.

Do you think you even need to have a degree in order to work in most fields, outside of, you know, being a doctor or something like this?

Other than those things, I would say absolutely not.

I would say, in terms of sort of work practicality and apprenticeship or things like that, probably more practical in most cases.

But you should go to uni if you want to for the experience.

Do you have to do a degree to become a teacher?

Is it advised to if you wanted to get into that job market?

Yeah, you would need a degree to become a teacher.

It's not always in the subject that you're looking to teach in.

So a lot of teachers who do teach physics didn't do a physics degree.

But it is desirable and I think makes you a more desirable candidate.

But do you think it helps to have a degree in general to start?

No.

I don't think that's a requirement anymore.

There's so many jobs that you can do now that doesn't need further education.

Because you can learn on the job.

There's apprenticeships and lots of other jobs where you can train and tradesmen and all kinds of jobs where you don't need to have a university education to do.

Like entry level positions?

Yeah, because going to university is super expensive.

So you need to really want to do that.

There's so many other jobs that you can do that don't require that high level of education.

Would you say that people need to have a degree nowadays, do you think?

I don't think so, no.

You think entry level and apprenticeships?

I think that's the way forward is learning actually on the job.

Did you study to do this specifically or did you need a degree to do this?

No, neither of us went to university.

Do you have any advice in terms of how to get a job?

Any tips or tricks?

Just keep looking, don't give up.

Don't just look online and just think, you know, go in and ask places.

Because a lot of people don't advertise, so just go in and ask.

If you feel like you want to do something somewhere in a certain shop, go in.

I think because degrees are diminishing in value very much, unless you're going to go to quite a well regarded university, you'd probably be better off looking at alternative qualifications.

They're going to be more practical but you're in less debt.

You need to make sure that you look around.

Look around for what you're actually interested in and don't necessarily settle on the first thing that you see.

Obviously depending on what you're looking for, but there are a lot of jobs out there in various markets and it does require a little bit of weighing up your options.

Don't just settle on the first thing you see, I think.

Hard work, hard work pays off.

Hard work pays off in whatever you do, whatever job you do.

If you work hard, you will succeed and never give up really.

Just keep persevering and you will eventually get to where you want to be.

Very nice of you to say.

What advice would you give in order to get the jobs that you had or similar?

I reckon if you get given an opportunity and you don't think you can do it, just give it a go anyway and learn as you can.

Don't be afraid to ask questions.

Work hard.

If you're doing a degree, you have to work really hard to get that.

If you haven't got that behind you, you've got to just work hard, be willing and open to new things in the work environment and just work your way up in that respect really.

I would try and plan out what path you want to take.

So sort of map out ahead of time the career trajectory and then take the steps necessary to make that happen.