> There is a lag in perception though, but it’s still very much boom and bust type work.
Boom and bust in something like construction, true, but what about something like plumbing? its not cyclical because so much of the work is repairs and maintenance. On the other hand there are lots of white collar jobs that are cyclical.
We have had a huge strike in the UK (specifically at the largest local authority in Europe) because bin men's pay (not basic pay - it was a bit more complex) was reduced to bring them in line with teaching assistants (because of a court ruling that it was discriminatory to pay mostly male bin men more than mostly female teaching assistant).
Lots of office jobs have been badly paid compared to skilled work well before 2008. The influx of East Europeans slowed it down, but did not reverse the trend.
>Lots of office jobs have been badly paid compared to skilled work
"Pay" is not a scalar measure, it is a vector with multiple components. Roughly speaking, pay is short for "pay to quality of life at work ratio". Which incorporates everything a person thinks about when choosing what to sell, including volatility of pay, what coworkers will be like, possibility of injury, commute time, the weather and conditions you will be working in, potential upward movement, potential for harassment at work, location of work, potential of finding a spouse with xyz characteristics, etc.
Swinging hammers or plumbing or whatever can strictly pay more, but not may not be sufficient to incentivize people to choose to do them over being paid less in an office. Pay someone 300,000 GBP per year to do 40 hours per week of plumbing working, and the UK would have plenty of plumbers, and parents would be recommending their kids to become plumbers. But if the differential is only 10,000 GBP? Maybe not worth it.
Boom and bust in something like construction, true, but what about something like plumbing? its not cyclical because so much of the work is repairs and maintenance. On the other hand there are lots of white collar jobs that are cyclical.
We have had a huge strike in the UK (specifically at the largest local authority in Europe) because bin men's pay (not basic pay - it was a bit more complex) was reduced to bring them in line with teaching assistants (because of a court ruling that it was discriminatory to pay mostly male bin men more than mostly female teaching assistant).
Lots of office jobs have been badly paid compared to skilled work well before 2008. The influx of East Europeans slowed it down, but did not reverse the trend.