Electricians' Earnings. Is it Really So?

I will not paraphrase an unlikeabe so my reaction is "News Fake"

 

Oh I wish it were true though, I really do. We deserve it methinks if the world of commerce were fair

I didnt read the link but I presume you are saying electricians earn £70k typically.

If so, then it is utter rubbish, spouted out by training companies and newspapers.

'More or Less' on Radio 4 did a piece on it a couple of months ago, and gave the true facts. IIRC, a typical wage was £30k ish.

Brickies were supposedly earning £60k, but actually are on £24-28k. 

The thinking behind the £70k was they worked 6 days a week at their top rate every week of the year. No holidays etc, and no time off for bad weather etc.

Its just made up rubbish.

I think someone has taken the hourly rate for a contractor and multiplied it up, not allowing that a lot of that cost is not earning in the normal sense, but actually has to run the business for the non -earning activities like  visits for  estimates or organising customer paperwork, tools, insurance etc.  nor is it continuous, it also says 'some' which may include 'not many'. It is clearly intended as an eye catching headline.

Also I suspect that Hudson Contract who provide the figures does not deal with the sort of one or two man outfits that do ex council house  repairs and add ons and the odd rewire, which I suspect form the vast majority, but are looking at the rates of the larger company with an office and overheads.

Well put Mapj,I have heard customers say "How much per hour? I don`t earn that!" well my answer would be "Neither do I! it is my charging rate not my earning rate"

It is strange that we don't see jobs like this advertised anywhere!

I remember back in the 1990s in news papers like the sun , star and mirror having articles about plumbers , electricians and plastering earning £100k a year due to a skills shortage in big cities.

to earn that sort of money you will need to be self deployed and very busy.

i did some work for a south London based electrical firm in the 00s and the owner had done very well for himself and lived in a multi million pound house. But he has some extremely lucrative contracts with developers and builders where they could get away with charging eye watering rates to clients.

but this isn’t the norm up and down the country.

mosy sparks don’t live in multi million pound houses and drive about town in a new Aston Martin.


its well documented the plumber who set up Pimlico plumbing has done well for himself but again notbthe norm

Reminds me of the salary surveys that used to be published regularly where we used to find that we were in the bottom quartile of the industry according to the survey while our employer was stating that salaries were aligned with market rates. Strangely we never used to see jobs advertised that were in any of the three higher quartiles.....

When my kids were little I worked more than fifty two weeks a year if you assumed forty hours in a working week.

Something similar must be happening with the Hudson Contracts electricians as they appear to be working sixty two weeks a year.


 Andy Betteridge