Uno su sei lavoratori del Regno Unito che lottano per pagare le bollette

Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/g8ANa

> Office for National Statistics said just over a quarter of adults said they could not afford an unexpected but necessary expense of £850

> One in six UK workers are struggling to pay their bills, helping drive up the number of people with second jobs to the highest on record, according to new data on the cost of living crisis.

> A study of 3,800 workers by the Work Foundation think tank found that 17 per cent reported struggling to pay their bills at the end of every month. And 40 per cent said they had little income left over for savings or holidays.

> The foundation said that numbers show that despite rising real wage growth this year, the cost of living crisis has not alleviated for many workers this year. Under half of surveyed workers said the pace of their earnings can keep with the cost of living.

> Separate figures from the Office for National Statistics said just over a quarter of adults said they could not afford an “unexpected but necessary expense of £850”, the highest proportion since September 2024.

> Ben Harrison, director of the Work Foundation at Lancaster University, said: “Raising living standards is not just about figures on a spreadsheet, it’s about workers feeling more financially secure. Four years on from the start of the worst cost of living crisis in a generation, our analysis shows workers continue to feel the impact of nearly 20 years of stagnating pay packets.”

> The number of workers with second jobs has hit a record of 1.23 million, an increase of 121,000 or 10 per cent on the year. This is the highest proportion of the workforce since equivalent records began in 1992.

> “Second jobs are sometimes glamorised as side hustles or optional extras but economic necessity is often a key motivation. Despite a period of sustained pay increases, the growth in second jobs points to continued cost of living pressures that mean some workers are struggling to make enough money in their main roles and are taking on additional jobs to make ends meet,” Harrison said.

> Younger workers also suffer from higher job uncertainty, with half of 16-24 year olds fearing they will lose their job in the next 12 months. The UK’s overall unemployment rate has risen to 4.6 per cent this year — a four-year high — and vacancies and payroll growth have also slowed under pressure from higher payroll taxes and still high interest rates.

> The slowing job market has put pressure on the Bank of England to deliver a faster pace of rate cuts, with traders betting on another quarter of a percentage point cut at the central bank’s next meeting in August.

> The Bank has said it wants to see more evidence that wage pressures are falling before it delivers bigger interest rate cuts. The Work Foundation’s survey said that only a quarter of older workers — aged 55-64 — believed they would get an above-inflation pay rise this year.

I feel like we already know how bad the cost of living crisis is for vast numbers of people. The real question is what the fuck are we going to do about it? It’s the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about, instead all we talk about is how bad it is and that it needs to be solved, but no one talks about how?

If my dad didn’t secure us the social housing we’re currently living in back in 2009, we would definitely be in this statistic.

The Tories ran every service into the ground or allowed private companies to do it in the case of water and rail. At tue same time they increased taxes to their highest level in decades.

We have crumbling infrastructure, a public who all pay to much and a well meaning but inexperienced government trying to balance the books.

It’s going to take a while to sort it out.

The bills for me in a 2 bed with my 6-year-old daughter 50% of the time are absolutely outrageous. Add on top of that the price of food at all supermarkets, and I’m living paycheck to paycheck.

Don’t get me wrong, im getting by, but at the end of the month, I’m left with about 20% of my money as disposable income. It’s ridiculous.

This stat doesn’t really mean anything without comparable figures from the past. Was it worse 10, 20, 30 or 40 years ago? Was it better?

Someone working paycheque to paycheque isn’t a new phenomenon.

If the UK were a business it would’ve folded in 2008.

Our national debt doubled under Cameron and Osbourne, despite the apparent austerity to balance the books. Services plundered, wages stagnating and opportunities decreasing. We spaffed it up the wall during COVID – that money could’ve been used in a big capital investment to rejuvenate the economy. Hindsight is a bitch, but we probably wouldn’t have invested in ourselves anyway.

Our population has increased by 10 million since 2000 yet we are lucky to build 100,000 homes per year. Our economy and personal wealth is tied into property, and our limited housing supply combined with quantitative easing has inflated prices even more. You can only get a house easily if you are able to outbid a landlord when buying, treat attaining a private let like a 50m Olympic sprint or state that you have additional needs or particular circumstances to get a council or association home (whether truthful or not). This is a major contributing factor to the tone of our discourse surrounding migration today.

We have an ageing population and our state pension is reliant on current workers funding current retirees. We have an increasingly sick population amidst a mental health crisis and we have a large amount of jobs that nobody wishes to do due to wages stagnation. This is why we need migration, but it fails to address the issues of cultural cohesion, integration, etc.

I really do worry about our future. I worry about how our wage depressed (and increasingly taxed) cohort of income tax payers can fund the welfare state, increase in military and investment for the future. I worry about our long standing communities of other faiths and cultures being further ostracised as a result of Boris letting in too many people after COVID and ruining cohesion. If the government and OBR are right, something big will need to give in the future. I genuinely believe something like the state pension, or the NHS only being available for those on benefits or low incomes, being introduced. And to think I had an opportunity to move abroad 6 years ago… don’t think about it.