On all my trips to London, I've always wondered about the people I come across living there. You can say the average salary of a young person starting out in the US is $30-50K. This is enough to rent an apartment, live very comfortably as a single person, etc. What is the average salary of a similar person in London?

I would make a small footnote---the average young person starting out needs to have a degree to start out at 30,000 dollars or more....I made 30,000 without a degree as a very young adult, but only with tons of overtime.

Also, 30-50k in SF is a lot of money, but does not go very far at all.

In London I did see that part time neighborhood safety (cops?) officers started at 25,000 pounds....but I don't think they are technically metropolitan police......

I would love to find what the average income is there as well.

If you look at the back pages of the Economist magazine, you can see some postings with British salaries.

I noticed in 2002 that the buses had ads on them offering jobs as a public bus driver for 7 pounds per hour.

If you go to any of the UK national newspaper websites you can easily check out starting salaries yourself.

They most include their want ads on the websites - I think you will be surprised how little starting salaries are even in really high cost cities like London, Edinburgh, etc.

There's piles of stuff online; but you need to look at sectors; not cross cutting

Information on graduate salaries is available in various surveys and reports but figures tend to be different, as they are arrived at in different ways.

£18,197 average and £18,211 median, offered by recruiters advertising in search job vacancies in the year to January 2006.
£18,211 is 33,692.25 USD
£22,851 (average) and £21,000 (median) for 2006 graduates, according to Prospects Directory.
£21,000 is 38,852.20 dollars
If my children are typical, young Londoners start off sharing a flat, rent a flat on their own and finally buy a place of their own.
The last step is difficult for a single person because mortgage companies usually lend only up to three times annual salary.

The thing that makes comparisons impossible is thee welfare system. Yes you may well have a bus driver on £7 an hour (sounds a bit low to me, but anyway). If that bus driver has kids he will get tax credits and possibly help with his rent and local taxes so in fact his real income is somewhat higher.

I believe the average salary in London is around the £30,000 mark - but it varies from job to job of course.

Also, I don't think anyone has mentioned the "London allowance" or "London weighting" that some public sectory employees (e.g. school teachers) receive. The pay scales for these jobs are agreed nationally, so this is to help with the higher cost of living in London than in most of the rest of the country. It's about £2000 - £3000 pa, I believe. I think the same applies to some private companies too. But it will be included in the advertised salary, not in addition, generally.

typo : I mean "public sector"

>You can say the average salary of a young person starting out in the US is $30-50K. <

You can say that, but it won't make it true.

The median household income in the US was about $43,000.

I doubt that youngsters are starting at the median.

I'm sure London bus drivers' starting wage of 7 pounds per hour has risen since I noticed it in 2002.

Try to live comfortably in San Francisco for $30K a year and you will be comfortably in for a big surprise

I think you meant to write "you will be UN-COMFORTABLY in for a big surprise."

I recently had a fairly junior employee ($75 a year) move to London with her fianace. Intially she got a job there at the same level and said the London salary was considerably less than the NYC salary for the same job. But - that the responsabilities were less and the working hours much less (1.5 hour lunches and done at 5:30 to 6pm every day).

She was soon promoted (twice in 1 1/2 years) and is now making closer to what she would in the US - but said work and hours are still considerably less.

She would prefer longer hours and more money - since she said London is expensive to live in - even compared to NYC (not primarily housing - but everything else - clothes, household goods, food in the market, etc)

The average annual salary in England is around 22,000, so with London weighting it would be near to 30,000, as I think David said.

I work for an NHS laboratory. Our trainee staff (Needing a BSc degree) would earn around £18K +£2K London weighting. This is probably why London hospitals find it almost impossible to recruit.

I work in Local government and our basic clerical officer type grades (Housing Officer, school Admin, etc) are paid around £30K. Management and professional grades are paid more.

These are slightly better than their private sector counterparts, but we don't get bonuses etc.

..one of my friends recently interviewed for a job in London. She works for a drug company and it was a move to the head office. She turned them down as her salary would have been about the same as her present salary but the prices in London (esp housing) would have resulted in a huge decrease in her standard of living.

My husband was transferred to London last year and he is paid in pounds 90% of what his USD salary was - so almost double in US$. Coming from the Midwest we have taken a rather significant reduction in our day to day standard of living. He also says that people in his company here make roughly equivalent salaries of people at the same level in the US - ex. a position in the US that paid $100K may pay 50K pounds in London. But he is an expat transfer so his salary is based on what he used to make in the US - fortunately for us.

>...people in his company here make roughly equivalent salaries of people at the same level in the US - ex. a position in the US that paid $100K may pay 50K pounds in London.<

Ouch, that hurts.