Electrician's pay ?

Talk Electrician Forum

Help Support Talk Electrician Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Evans Electric

TEF LINUX ADMIN™
Supporting Member
Joined
Sep 15, 2008
Messages
23,507
Reaction score
527
Location
Birmingham
I caught some of this on radio this morning  but didn't hear the follow up   or details.      Just wondering if anyone else heard it . 

Bricklayers on £1500   /week ..  .Plumbers  on  £2000 /week  ...and ELECTRICIANS  on  £3000   /week      due to shortage of skilled tradesmen .       

So where is that happening  ?       Thats nearly as much as  Stepps gets   :innocent

 
This is just nonsense Deke, Daily Mail and sensationalist journalism at its best/worst.

The large bodies corporate base their headcount on about £150k per head, I know because when I was last employed we lost a few contracts which came out at about £500k, when Rover went through, so we lost 4 bodies from the department, no options, get rid.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
3k a week! :slap

@Canoeboy maybe but the rest of us... no chance! 
Yeah EVERY week!

I've done £20k+ in a month, but the month before was virtually nothing it was spent planning & prepping for the work the following month, building bits, getting things ready etc.

It just so happens that all the jobs finish at the same time, and you get to invoice them all in one month.

Then that happens maybe once or twice a year, the rest of the year you are getting along on a few £k per month.

 
I was reading up about the information a while back as to what the £150,000 covers. Its actually the gross profit a firm would need to make to be able to actually employ a full sparky, which when you add everything up, would tally to around £150K per year, so the Daily Mail either cant do their figures or live in a bubble. I could be completely barking though.

Andy Guinness

 
I made £2500 one week, I lost £830 in deductions, it was time to tone down the overtime.

 
I was at a customers, a bank bussiness manager, (so he should know figures).

Dude - 'I might retrain as a plumber, i cant beleive how much they earn'

Pewter - 'why is that?, how much was you charged for the work?'

Dude - '£700 plumber charged me for a days work'

Pewter - 'was there 2 of them?'

Dude - 'Yes'

Pewter - 'Did that include materials?'

Dude - 'Yes'

Pewter - 'My bussiness cost for each day i work (roughly 200 chargable days per year) as self employed spark is £25 + £25ish if i include van repayment'

Dude - 'Oh'

Pewter - 'so £700 - £200ish materials = £500 - £50 (van + bussiness fund) = £450 /2 = £225 for each plumber'

Pewter - 'did they do a long day?'

Dude - 'yeah long day'

Pewter - 'a long day for £225, self employed, no holiday or pension'

Pewter - 'do you still want to be a plumber or electrician?'

Dude - 'No'

 
Last edited by a moderator:
That reminded me of a visit to our accountant  back in the day ............sitting in his office  dealing with us , he excused himself to take a brief phone call ....he listened for about 20 seconds  ,,said "Yes"  , rung off   and noted something in ledger .

My mate was watching  and said  "   You 've just made a note  on that guy's account to be  charged "  ??         " Well yes , he's just consulted me in my professional  capacity"   

The same man could not understand why we didn't / couldn't  charge for our estimates & quotations.            Which of us is the mug ?  

 
I'm beginning to think more like that, we have skills and knowledge that others don't. Why should we give that away for free? I stopped doing extensive written quotes years ago after finding out people were using them to do the work themselves or get a.n.other to undercut prices.

 
I remember many years ago, I was earning £7.50 an hour at the time, I had a run in with the revenue, trying to accuse me of not paying the correct tax, they reckoned the average spark was on £35k a year!

My old chap was always going on about us sparks being elitist and how there had been a massive row at his firm when it came out that the sparks were on about £1.50 an hour more than anyone else, he was really winding me up.

I showed him some of the calculations we sometimes have to do, and explained how in our job more so than a lot of others, if it went wrong someone could get badly hurt or killed, and that when there was an incident involving electricity, it usually ended with a game, rightly or wrongly of "pin the blame on the sparky".

He sat quietly for a while, taking in what I had told him, looking at the calculations I'd done, and the other figures, cost of test gear etc, then "you know son, I wouldn't have your job for a gold clock, you don't get paid enough for all the aggro and responsibility"

Hallelujah, he'd finally seen the light!

I don't think people do understand our job, lets be honest, when you are green and starting out you sit down and calculate cable sizes for different things, a shower for example, 9.5 Kw, length of run 20 mtrs, trunked up a wall, part of it covered with insulation, you get your book out, work it out and off you go. A few years down the line and all this is in your head, experience, you now look at an Identical job and you just know what size cable to use. Even if you do get a job where you need to sit down and work it out, the client never sees this bit, you roll up, throw a cable in, connect it and hey presto, it just works, it's easy!

A lot of the time the client only realises how complex certain parts of our job can be is when they've tried to do it themselves and it goes wrong.

There's a lot of myths and rumour spread about how easy we have it, you only have to look at the adverts in the papers from the training centre's, "you could earn upwards of £60k a year, simply by training to be an electrician at one of our training centres"

They never mention struggling to find work, or working in a loft in the middle of a hot summer, or outside on a cold rainy winters day, or getting called out at daft o'clock in the morning to a breakdown that could have waited until the following day! NO! electricians are paid very handsomely for doing easy jobs, they all drive new vehicles, go to work in smart overalls and come home as clean as they were when they left home that morning.

Please can somebody tell me where this electricians eutopia is please, I'd really like to live and work there.

 
I'm beginning to think more like that, we have skills and knowledge that others don't. Why should we give that away for free? I stopped doing extensive written quotes years ago after finding out people were using them to do the work themselves or get a.n.other to undercut prices.


same here. i dont give quotes, estimates only

 
Top