I thought I was rich way back then

Not got it but 50 quid a week as a plater (steel fabricator) at John Brown Engineering (Clydebank) in 1982

THat seems very low even for that long ago!! How much was stuff back then?

Not quite the same but I found a finance agreement my dad took out about that time for a £300 Panasonic top loader VCR.

IIRC it had his weekly/monthly Navy pay on it, was a WTF moment…

I seem to remember record albums were about £2.99 back in 1982

Wish I’d kept mine now.

1997 Trainee fabricator £1.77 p/h

First wage spent on a pair of Adidas.

Just checked 1982 Argos catalogue, biggest TV was a colour 16″ PYE model and cost £220! 14″ one was £190. So pretty much 2 months wages….

If you want to look at more Argos stuff from that year go to here: https://issuu.com/retromash/docs/argos-no18-1982-autumnwinter

I started as a toolmaker around 1997/8 and was on the grand total of £1.80 ish per hour

That does seem low – were you an apprentice/trainee? My first job was in an MFI warehouse at Christmas 1983, on an hourly rate of £2.25, which increased to £2.50 the following April (double time on bank holidays and, later, Sundays). My net pay packet for the week starting Boxing Day was around £100. Spent £170 on a new bike in the New Year. Needless to say I stuck with MFI through 6th form and my brief university career.

mine was also late twenties as an apprentice turner.

I seem to remember record albums were about £2.99 back in 1982

yup, i remember that as being the norm back then.

apprentice roofer

Recently compared latest annual bonus with first annual salary.

😯 😯 😯 😯 😯 😯 😯 😯 😯 😯 😯 😯 😯 😯 😯

Looked at mine the other day in the loft , September 1983 VSEL apprentice Fitter n Turner £36.00 per week.

I looked that young at 16 never went out or did much, used to tear off the corner of the pay packet pour out the 6 £ coins to live on and throw the pay packet full of notes in the draw.

Then I sprouted, discovered beer and women and the rest was history!!

£17 per day stacking shelves in the new Hypermarket. I always bagsied the crisp isle cos it was easy and you could split the occasional bag for snackage. Think that ’82.

Not pay but I survived and didnt get into debt doing a masters and phd getting about 7k a year between 97-2002ish. No idea how I did that tbh.

I was on a YTS in 1983 straight after leaving school, working on a building site. £25 a week and had to give my mum £10 digs money, while my sister moved into a flat and the parents paid her rent!

Found one a while back first one with a rate not working on my family farm
Would have been 2.95/hr (1996) if I was 18 so probably about 2.50 as I was 17. Following year would have been 3.06 (1997) if I was at that grade….
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/49344/response/120486/attach/html/2/Spreadsheet%20of%20rates%201.xls.html
If that was full time it would have been 5,875/year

First full time job was later in 99 and it was a heafty 9,900/year rent, bills and travel took about all of that I reckon.

I remember going for my first good job up at Sellafield in 03 and the offer on the phone was 16, so was tempted, no 16/hr not 16k 🙂

That looks the same as mine in 1988 on YTS as a trainee gamekeeper after digs money was taken out (living on site in South Wales).

Abergaveny hotel used to cash my pay check for me 😀

You got £1.04 more than me, Bruneep.

I, too, thought I was rich but found many things on which to spend my wealth. Alcohol being one of them, though even that didn’t really dent it back then…

Sept 1987 I got paid by cheque for my first months pay.

£956 I actually said to myself “I cant possibly spend all that”.

Didn’t say that next month though.

1981 = paper round £4 a week for 7 days plus a Saturday job in a Jet Petrol station where you served the fuel and checked oil/water etc, £15 a day for this plus tips (made a big difference). This was quite good I thought at the time for still being at school. Did used to feel a bit odd after breathing in petrol fumes all day though.

My first proper job, Post Office Telephones, July 1969 £7/7/6, that’s seven pounds seven shillings and sixpence for you decimilised peeps.

Wow, I was doing A LEVELS back then.. didn’t earn anything (uni grant not included) until 1988.. IRC my first salary just covered my then mortgage payment.

1987 – Computer Operator, £600 per month + £100 or so in overtime.

Inflation calculator

Bruneep’s 75p/hour is £2.64 today. You were ripped off.

1994 on a “well off” farm (shooting estate for rich American Soya baron) that paid NFU recommended rates. £4.00 ph and 1.5x for overtime over 39 hours a week.

Best week in middle of harvest was 7 days, 7am to 10pm. £550. That was a lot of money to a 17yr old saving for University.

I remember my first salary at Knight Frank in London in ’97 was only £300 per week, and my rent was £600 per month.

£3.75/hr in 2001 in McDonald’s

I never did a paper round. Some seasonal work picking raspberries, and later tatties (hardest work ever).

My first payslip (which I don’t think I have any more) would have been from FineFare, c. 1978/9, for shelf-stacking with the Metto (?) price sticker guns. A later summer job was in a distillery, that was pretty well paid (though I didn’t get the regular lunch time dram, being 17).

£15 a week and £3 for a saturday fruit market 1976

First ‘proper’ job starting at the bottom, working in the utilities industry. £10867 per annum or £729 per month back in 1997… Didn’t seem a hell of a lot then – seems very little indeed now.

saving for University

Sorry, what?

Ah! didn’t say, that was £7/7/6 per week.

1978 or 79, local fish factory, shelling queenies (queen scallops) for variable piecework rates. If the queenies were fresh and big you could make £14 or so for four nights plus saturday morning. When it was apparent that the money was getting easier, the manager dropped the rates though; so the workforce went to great lengths to make it look harder. Tough, smelly work.

First part time job was in Tesco, earning about £3.50 an hour at 16 which was a really good rate in 1993 in South Wales, let alone for a bunch of kids who treated the place like a Youth Club every evening. You got free, or close to free meals in the canteen, a 10% staff discount on your shopping which you could sign over to your parents and even a finally salary pension!

The next year Sunday Trading started – they couldn’t contract you to do it, it had to be overtime and they paid double time for it – by the time I left at 19 I was on £10 an hour on Sundays, it was a 7 hour day, you arrived 30 mins before the store opened to kick about and chat for a bit and left 30 mins after it closed to help kick out the stragglers and ‘tidy up’ aka kick about and chat. £10 an hour is £17.23 an hour inflation corrected, about what you’re on at £35k a year these days.

One of the easiest jobs I’ve ever had, my Aunt still works there now, 20+ years later, it’s changed so much, if you wrote the history of this little half-sized supermarket in a fairly quiet town it would tell you a decent chunk of all you need to know about the way the UK has changed in 20 years.

There’s so many real grown up Adults these days who’ll work evenings and weekends they don’t really employ Teenagers part-time anymore.

They pay a bit better than minimum wage, but not much – if I worked a Sunday in 1995 I was earning £10 an hour, if my Aunt works the day after tomorrow she’s on £8.43.

They employ roughly half the number of staff they did in the 90s, but they have twice the footfall.

The canteen has gone, the staff incentive scheme isn’t as good, the pension isn’t nearly as good, and not all staff even get that – the cleaners, the security (the only new role since I left) and some of the night staff are agency.

Staff are expected now to be at their station ready to work 5 mins before their shifts starts.

In the 90s the busiest times were still mid-morning, mid-week, after the stay at home parent (well it was Mum back then) has dropped the kids to school, now they’re the quietest times.

In the 90s Levi’s actually took Tesco to court to stop them selling their jeans which they’d sourced from abroad and sold at half the UK RRP. Because they didn’t want their clothes being sold amongst the fruit and veg and they were, there’s wasn’t an aisle for it – before that day the store sold – food, we had an aisle end for batteries, another for shoe polish and a quarter aisle devoted to small toys for kids parties, that was it. Tesco lost and partly because of that they started their own clothing line, now they’re the UKs 4th largest clothing retailer, ASDA is 2nd, Sainsbury’s is 5th

£27.60 take home a week in 1983 (apprentice wages)…. i thought i was rolling in money until my mate who worked at the chicken factory said he brought home £100

£7,500 a year in 1996 as a stock allocator for Sports Division at the tender age of 19.

Both the job and the company are now things consigned to the past

First paid job was scullin tatties during, funnily enough, the Tattie holidays. There were three of us but I was doing half the work. They demoted the other two and ‘promoted’ my wee brother and we got paid £1 a day extra (so £8/day) we thought we were rich 😆

First proper job I’m pretty sure I got paid less than £150/month. Started in June, didn’t earn enough to pay tax that year. Man it hurt when come April I nudged into the tax bracket and thus had a (net take home) pay cut… 😥

Started back in ’82.

£35 for a weekend rigging hire dinghies and handing out bouyancy aids…

richmtb – Member
£7,500 a year in 1996 as a stock allocator for Sports Division at the tender age of 19.

Both the job and the company are now things consigned to the past

Did a couple of stints in Sports Division ’95 – ’96. Merry Hill branch.