No Jobs?

[Spiffor]

Within minutes of arriving in central London, our reporter found work at the Henry Holland pub in Marylebone, as a £5.50-an-hour kitchen hand.

Working 48 hours a week (the maximal legal time in the EU, and way above the British mean), this job would yield £1056 a month.

How far can you go in London with £1056 ?

[Jon Miller]

I think that that is the real issue. The low income hasn't kept up with what is needed to servive.

Probably many of the unemployed people get a little under the table...

Jon Miller

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Within minutes of arriving in central London, our reporter found work at the Henry Holland pub in Marylebone, as a £5.50-an-hour kitchen hand.

Working 48 hours a week (the maximal legal time in the EU, and way above the British mean), this job would yield £1056 a month.

How far can you go in London with £1056 ?

And then there is tax...after which there would probably be about enough to cover my rent and council tax.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Spiffor
How far can you go in London with £1056 ?

F*cking nowhere. Mind you, I can see myself going for such a job soon as an emergency measure until I can get something in line with my experience and work history.

[Provost Harrison]

You're looking at moving to Primrose Hill on a minimum wage job? Sheesh, talk about head in the clouds

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
F*cking nowhere. Mind you, I can see myself going for such a job soon as an emergency measure until I can get something in line with my experience and work history.

If you manage to find a serious job while being a kitchen hand for 48 hours a week, and spending your remaining energy surviving with a pittance, you're my hero.

[Jon Miller]

No 48 hours a week have exhausted me as much as those from when I was working in the cannery. And for those who didn't have off 1 day for religious reasons, it was 56 hours a week. I would just zone out in front of the TV for a couple hours because I was too tired to game, and I wouldn't do a whole lot before work either (I had swing -> 3-11).

Jon Miller

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Within minutes of arriving in central London, our reporter found work at the Henry Holland pub in Marylebone, as a £5.50-an-hour kitchen hand.

Working 48 hours a week (the maximal legal time in the EU, and way above the British mean), this job would yield £1056 a month.

How far can you go in London with £1056 ?

Working 48 hours a week is equivalent to £1,144 a month.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Spiffor

If you manage to find a serious job while being a kitchen hand for 48 hours a week, and spending your remaining energy surviving with a pittance, you're my hero.

Why??

When I was a student and on summer vacation I usually try to get two full-time jobs and would work both for a period of 12 weeks or so.

I don't advocate THAT as a lifestyle but I would think that its not at all that difficult to do a serious job search while holding down a job

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
I think that that is the real issue. The low income hasn't kept up with what is needed to servive.

Probably many of the unemployed people get a little under the table...

Jon Miller

QFT-- when wages are less than benefits, its always better to not work-- When you pull in a bit of under the table wages-- unemployment is even more attractive.

Where I grew up, one of advantages for the unemployed was the firewood they would cut, the moose or caribou they would hunt and usually some cash money working for a fisherman

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Dauphin
Working 48 hours a week is equivalent to £1,144 a month.

indeed, I calculated the weekly wage and then multiplied by 4.

I guess the extra £88 make survival in London a bit less dire. I'm not sure it's decent yet however.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Flubber
I don't advocate THAT as a lifestyle but I would think that its not at all that difficult to do a serious job search while holding down a job

Well, maybe when I did work 48 hours a week in manual labour, I was in a bad personal situation... But I definitely didn't have any energy after coming back from work, not even to do something pleasant. Definitely not the energy to do anything with my brain.

[C0ckney]

let me tell you a story spiffor.

in september last year i walked out of my very well paid job in the insurance industry and told them where they could shove it. i moved up to swansea, didn't have a place to live, no job, nothing except my car and about £1000, half of which was an overdraft. crashed on a mates sofa for a few days, until i got a place sorted. within a couple of weeks i got a job, 3 in fact, working in a shop, cooking in an old people's home and as a barman. all minimum wage (except the old people's home, where i was able to re-negotiate pretty quickly, because i'm a very good cook ), all pretty hard work as well, certainly not the sort of jobs a bright guy with a law degree dreams about. was doing 50-60+ hours a week easily, to make enough to money to fund other little ventures, to make more money.

while doing all this i was always looking for work doing something better, i was saving up to fund becoming a re-max estate agent and starting my own little business (i worked out i'd need realistically about £4000-5000). in january however, one of my many applications came good, and i was offered a job at one of largest law firms in wales, which is what i do now.

so yeah it's possible and all i did was worked hard and believed in myself.

[Ecthy]

How many Welsh girls did you sh@g on the way there?

[C0ckney]

not as many as i would of liked.