How much would you pay someone to do a job for you? The answer must depend on how desperate you are to get the job done and done well. Is it worth 50p per hour to you or maybe £5 per hour, £15 per hour or maybe £5,000 per hour. Here are a few details of well known job roles and the pay rates:
As at Dec 2022 the PM is entitled to claim £80,807. (click here ). As an MP as at April 2023 the UK’s PM can claim £86,584 (click here for source). So the Prime Minister of the UK is paid £167,391 (assuming a PM wishes to take the full amount of pay on offer) and if we consider that the usual working year is approximately 231 working days (365 days less entitlement of most workers (click here for info) 20holiday. less weekends (104 days) less holiday (inclusive of 8 days bank holiday) ie 28 days which is 233 days) at say 7.5 hours per day then that equates to an hourly rate of £167,391 / (233 x 7.5) = £95.78 per hour.
At an extreme if a Prime Minister worked every day and every hour of the year that would be equal to £167,391 / (365 x 24) = £19.10 per hour
PS This does not include expenses that MPs can claim for accommodation, dependant travel, own MP travel costs, office costs, staff travel and staffing. The current PM aa at December 2023, Rishi Sunak, for 2022/23 ( click here for info) claimed staffing costs of £210,764.08
The Chief Executive of British Peteroleum in 2022 was (according the BP’s remuneration report) paid approximately ten million pounds. This equates to £10,025,782 (233 x 7.5) = £5,737.21 per hour.
Based on a working week of 40 hours this would equate to: £10,025,782 (233 x 8) = £5,378 per hour.
At an extreme if the CEO of BP worked every day and every hour of the year that would equate to £10,025,782 / (365 x 24) = £1144 per hour
Click here for remuneration report information.
The General Secretary of UNISON was paid for year ended 31.12.21 the total salary and benefits of £151,643
This equates to £151,643 / (233 x 7.5) = £86.77 per hour.
Based on a 40 hour working week this equates to £151,643 / (233 x 8) = £81.35 per hour.
At an extreme if working every hour of every day of the year that would be equal to : £151,643 / (365 x 24) = £17.31 per hour (Click here for source information)
Teachers entering the profession according to Times Educational Supplement (click here for source information) will be paid £30,000 per annum. Based on 233 days and 7.5 hour days this would be equal to £30,000 / (233 x 7.5) = £17.16 per hour.
If they chose to work all hours of every day that would be: £30,000 (365 x 24) = £3.42 per hour
Local Government Chiefs paid on average £154,764 (July 2022) – click here for source information.
This equates to £154,764 (233 x 7.5) = £88.56 per hour and if they chose to work 365 days and 24 hours per day that would result in a pay rate of £154,764 / (365 x 7.5) = £53.56 per hour
Junior Doctors: What is a Junior Doctor. An explanation of doctor titles can be found by clicking here and a snippet from that is as follows:
As for doctors and dentists information on their pay award status as at 7 August 2023 can be found in the document titled : “Pay and Conditions Circular (M&D) 4/2023 Pay award for hospital medical and dental staff, doctors and dentists in public health, the community health service and salaried primary dental care (England)” (this can be found by clicking here
In the 2016 contract terms (click here for terms and see page 2 “The basic salary for a doctor employed full time is calculated on an average of 40 hours’ work per week.”
The August circular details a pay rise of 6% plus a consolidated sum of £1,250 per pay point pay for FY1 junior doctors to give £32,398 as shown in the table below. This equates to £32,398 / (233 x 8) = £17.38 per hour.
Before the pay award offer a doctors pay was £28,384 which was £28,384 / (233 x 8) = £15.22 per hour
An informative article on doctors’ pay can be found by clicking here
An interesting article by Richard Murphy can be found by clicking here
In this article he puts forward an interesting theory as follows:
“………To top that, and to break what Tories saw as the power of overpaid consultants, politicians have since 2010 pursued a policy of deliberately underpaying junior NHS doctors. The aim was to reduce their status. They were to be put in their place. They were to become the fodder for recruitment by private medicine that would offer them more pay to break the NHS. The real decline in pay exceeds 25 per cent. That was not accident. It was design. The Tories thought they could trap the junior doctors into being the agents of change. Their hope was that the frustration of those doctors would break the NHS.
To some extent the Tories were right. Junior doctors realised they cannot afford to work for the NHS and enjoy anything like the lifestyle that their older colleagues did at the same stage in their careers. The financial placed burdens on them, and the deliberate underpayments, guaranteed that.
But the junior doctors aren’t stupid. That’s hardly surprising. They are recruited precisely because they are not stupid. They worked out the game. They saw that the end point was destruction of the NHS. Even now they are winning the PR game with Steve Barclay, the health secretary, precisely because they are able to call out his refusal to make a pay offer to resolve the dispute simply because they have more wit than him.”