4 ms·

I'm in the US and would love to hear about the UK expefiencd. What's it like when being laid off in the UK? Do you get guaranteed severance and some breathing

I'm in the US and would love to hear about the UK expefiencd. What's it like when being laid off in the UK? Do you get guaranteed severance and some breathing room from the stress of rent or mortgage payments? Do you worry about access to high quality Healthcare? Overall, do you think being in the UK makes you less worried that a layoff will leave you broke and homeless?

nivenkos 4y ago
It depends on your company, but the statutory minimums are awful. You get a minimum of 2 week's extra pay if you have over 2 years service, and Job Seekers' Allowance is about 77 quid a week - so imagine living on less than $500 a month. Healthcare access (via the NHS) is unaffected, you might be able to get free prescriptions too. But in general it's terrible. As always in Europe you either want to be an ultra-rich landowning aristocrat (little to no property tax, inheritance tax, etc.) or very poor/unemployed (e.g. a refugee) so you qualify for state housing, etc. - work does not pay. You pay high taxes and then don't qualify for assistance when it matters. The USA is better by far where you can just manage your own savings with your 3-4x higher salary, healthcare is still an issue though.
- doetoe 4y ago
  > in Europe you want to be [...] e.g. a refugee Have you ever spoken to a (non-white) refugee in Europe?
- Jommi 4y ago
  this isn't the case in northern Europe at all. First of all you get around 1kish a month no questions asked, more if you have bills etc. you can prove you need to pay and if you opted into "unemployment insurance" while employed, you'd be getting 60-80% of your salary for the next 12 months this insurance costs around 100e a year to opt into
  - kioleanu 4y ago
    Chiming in for Germany where unemployment insurance is mandatory and deducted from the salary each month. I personally pay 82 euros per month for 80% over a 1 year period (I think, I haven't checked in a while)
    - denvrede 4y ago
      60% (67% if you have at least one kid) of your average net salary over the last 12 month before unemployment. Capped at ~2k in the old states and ~1.8k in the new ones. Paid for a max of 12 month for ages 49 and below after that it gets slightly longer.
- kypro 4y ago
  > As always in Europe you either want to be an ultra-rich landowning aristocrat (little to no property tax, inheritance tax, etc.) or very poor/unemployed (e.g. a refugee) so you qualify for state housing, etc. - work does not pay. I just left an inappropriately long comment saying, in effect, actually the same thing. The US isn't perfect, but if you want to work you're generally able to move up the economic ladder easier from what I've seen. High income taxes combined with consumption taxes make wealth creation via employment almost impossible.
  - eddsh1994 4y ago
    > make wealth creation via employment almost impossible. Depends on what 'wealth' means here, but you can get a 1% salary in England in your late 20s by contracting in tech and save several grand a month. Put that in shares & buy-to-lets and you'll be very well off by 40 compared to the average person. With the lower cost of living I don't see any issues here... If that's what drives you of course.
    - scarby2 4y ago
      the cost of living isn't lower though.
    - iExploder 4y ago
      used to be like that 20 years ago, maybe still doable in todays economy but the bar is much much higher and there are some new risks involved
  - Yoric 4y ago
    > The US isn't perfect, but if you want to work you're generally able to move up the economic ladder easier from what I've seen. According to recent Nobel prizes in economic (Duflo and Banerjee), moving up the economic ladder has degraded so much in the US that it's currently lagging slightly behind Europe. Their study dates back to ~2018, though.
- scarby2 4y ago
  I was unemployed in the UK once (early in my career) it was not fun, luckily i was able to move in with my mother and scrape by for a few months. When my partner became unemployed in the USA i was amazed that she was getting $750 a week and her healthcare plan was $200 a month due to the marketplace subsidy.
- iExploder 4y ago
  Exactly on point, Europe is feudal and always have been. It is actually the reason why USA was "invented", when people who were fed up with the system left to start anew. I studied, lived and worked in high demand field all my adult life in Europe, am in my mid 30s and have nothing really to show for it. Salaries are lower than USA, the taxes are ridiculous, (progressive up to 50%), reasonably new house prices in reasonable locations are in millions. And health care... lol.. ok - it just about works, but as you can imagine anything public is prone to corruption and lowest passable quality Seeing USA, the last bastion for people who could make something out of themselves by real work crumbling and crawling to its death is disheartening.
  - jjav 4y ago
    > Salaries are lower than USA, the taxes are ridiculous, (progressive up to 50%), reasonably new house prices in reasonable locations are in millions. Marginal tax rates in California are also around 50% as well (above or below, depending on income). Houses are certainly in the millions. But on top of this you get to pay separately for extremely expensive health insurance and education, things that in most countries are very reasonably priced or even "free" (not free since it's paid for by the taxes, but at least you get services in exchange for your taxes, unlike in the US where you pay the taxes and have to pay separately for all the services).
    - iExploder 4y ago
      I'm not an expert on this but a quick check online and I found tax brackets for California: $35,000-$80,000 [25%] $80,000-$170,000 [28%] I'm just going to let you know that in Europe (Austria) personal income of 32,076 to 62,080 is taxed at 42% rate above 60k is taxed with 50%. And this does not include social and health insurance that is mandatory... To give you TLDR of the European experience, you look at the gross salary, multiply by 0.45 and this is the real money you would see landing in your account, .. enjoy .. :)
  - nivenkos 4y ago
    Yeah, although the USA didn't get there by itself, it's built on an empire of exploitation and murder in Latin America and Asia, etc.
kypro 4y ago
I'm a contractor so no severance, although I believe severance in the UK works fairly similarly to the US (I just wouldn't know). On mortgages, I'm very worried because in the UK all mortgages are ARMs and our repayments have gone up a ton. But in addition to this so have our energy bills, and expenses generally. > Do you worry about access to high quality Healthcare? I don't have private healthcare. Unless you're very rich most people in the UK just put up with the NHS. I'm young and healthy though so almost never need it anyway. In general I don't think any worries about access to healthcare here. > Overall, do you think being in the UK makes you less worried that a layoff will leave you broke and homeless? I'll give you a long answer to this because social mobility and the affordability of homes is something I care deeply about and apparently have a controversial opinion on... But the TL;DR would be that I'm more worried about being broke, but less about being homeless than someone in a similar situation to myself living in the US. Now the long answer... The UK is weird in that if you're from a background like mine and you want a decent life (a home and family) you're generally better off not working. With the exception of myself the only people I know from my childhood who have their own homes are those without jobs and on benefits. I don't believe this is the same in the US. In the UK if you work you're unlikely to be able to afford your own home unless you have fairly wealthy parents who can give you money, or a very good job – and if you're from a council estate you're almost guaranteed to have neither. So I'm not worried about being homeless because the state will give me a home, but I often feel I'm in an impossible situation in terms of moving up the economic ladder via employment. Imo there's no real wealth mobility in the UK because we're taxed so aggressively and progressively on income. In effect the more you try to earn to not be poor the more the state will hold you back to ensure that never happens, but if you're super wealthy already then you're not taxed a penny on what you have while the poor will pay for your public services and pension via income tax and various consumption taxes. The end result is that it means the best way to be wealthy in the UK is simply to inherit it (in ways that avoid inheritance tax, obviously). Although I would acknowledge starting a business is another viable option as that way you don't need to worry about income tax – but that's obviously not easy and requires a decent amount of luck. So I think the right answer your question is that it's just different here. If you're poor the state looks after you very well in comparison to the US. I know single mums who have been given £500,000 houses to live in by the state and £30,000 a year to live on (untaxed). But if you're from a background like mine and want to work for a living there isn't a practical path to afford a £500,000 house in your 30s as a single parent – not to mention the luxury of not having to work a single day of your life for that lifestyle. Speaking purely from a personal perspective, I would I'd feel much more financially secure in the US because the tax system is fairer there. My understand is that in the US you're taxed less for trying to build wealth and I don't believe you have consumption taxes. I think this is generally why people who work hard in the US can end up wealthy, but in the UK similar things don't really happen. But I would point out that most people in the UK disagree with me on this. Those who claim to care about social mobility the most here are generally the loudest advocates for even higher levels of income tax.
Yoric 4y ago
For what it's worth, in France, you get to pick between two different packages: - high guaranteed severance (~3-5 months of salary), then benefits that quickly decrease from pretty good to rather bad for 1.5 years; - lower severance (1-2 months of salary), then high benefits for one year (nearly full pay), then low benefits for a few months. In either case, you get ~1 year of the same health care coverage as you had before layoff, then you get downgraded to cheap health care coverage. Still highly stressful, though.

nivenkos 4y ago

It depends on your company, but the statutory minimums are awful. You get a minimum of 2 week's extra pay if you have over 2 years service, and Job Seekers' Allowance is about 77 quid a week - so imagine living on less than $500 a month. Healthcare access (via the NHS) is unaffected, you might be able to get free prescriptions too. But in general it's terrible. As always in Europe you either want to be an ultra-rich landowning aristocrat (little to no property tax, inheritance tax, etc.) or very poor/unemployed (e.g. a refugee) so you qualify for state housing, etc. - work does not pay. You pay high taxes and then don't qualify for assistance when it matters. The USA is better by far where you can just manage your own savings with your 3-4x higher salary, healthcare is still an issue though.

doetoe 4y ago
> in Europe you want to be [...] e.g. a refugee Have you ever spoken to a (non-white) refugee in Europe?
Jommi 4y ago
this isn't the case in northern Europe at all. First of all you get around 1kish a month no questions asked, more if you have bills etc. you can prove you need to pay and if you opted into "unemployment insurance" while employed, you'd be getting 60-80% of your salary for the next 12 months this insurance costs around 100e a year to opt into
- kioleanu 4y ago
  Chiming in for Germany where unemployment insurance is mandatory and deducted from the salary each month. I personally pay 82 euros per month for 80% over a 1 year period (I think, I haven't checked in a while)
  - denvrede 4y ago
    60% (67% if you have at least one kid) of your average net salary over the last 12 month before unemployment. Capped at ~2k in the old states and ~1.8k in the new ones. Paid for a max of 12 month for ages 49 and below after that it gets slightly longer.
kypro 4y ago
> As always in Europe you either want to be an ultra-rich landowning aristocrat (little to no property tax, inheritance tax, etc.) or very poor/unemployed (e.g. a refugee) so you qualify for state housing, etc. - work does not pay. I just left an inappropriately long comment saying, in effect, actually the same thing. The US isn't perfect, but if you want to work you're generally able to move up the economic ladder easier from what I've seen. High income taxes combined with consumption taxes make wealth creation via employment almost impossible.
- eddsh1994 4y ago
  > make wealth creation via employment almost impossible. Depends on what 'wealth' means here, but you can get a 1% salary in England in your late 20s by contracting in tech and save several grand a month. Put that in shares & buy-to-lets and you'll be very well off by 40 compared to the average person. With the lower cost of living I don't see any issues here... If that's what drives you of course.
  - scarby2 4y ago
    the cost of living isn't lower though.
  - iExploder 4y ago
    used to be like that 20 years ago, maybe still doable in todays economy but the bar is much much higher and there are some new risks involved
- Yoric 4y ago
  > The US isn't perfect, but if you want to work you're generally able to move up the economic ladder easier from what I've seen. According to recent Nobel prizes in economic (Duflo and Banerjee), moving up the economic ladder has degraded so much in the US that it's currently lagging slightly behind Europe. Their study dates back to ~2018, though.
scarby2 4y ago
I was unemployed in the UK once (early in my career) it was not fun, luckily i was able to move in with my mother and scrape by for a few months. When my partner became unemployed in the USA i was amazed that she was getting $750 a week and her healthcare plan was $200 a month due to the marketplace subsidy.
iExploder 4y ago
Exactly on point, Europe is feudal and always have been. It is actually the reason why USA was "invented", when people who were fed up with the system left to start anew. I studied, lived and worked in high demand field all my adult life in Europe, am in my mid 30s and have nothing really to show for it. Salaries are lower than USA, the taxes are ridiculous, (progressive up to 50%), reasonably new house prices in reasonable locations are in millions. And health care... lol.. ok - it just about works, but as you can imagine anything public is prone to corruption and lowest passable quality Seeing USA, the last bastion for people who could make something out of themselves by real work crumbling and crawling to its death is disheartening.
- jjav 4y ago
  > Salaries are lower than USA, the taxes are ridiculous, (progressive up to 50%), reasonably new house prices in reasonable locations are in millions. Marginal tax rates in California are also around 50% as well (above or below, depending on income). Houses are certainly in the millions. But on top of this you get to pay separately for extremely expensive health insurance and education, things that in most countries are very reasonably priced or even "free" (not free since it's paid for by the taxes, but at least you get services in exchange for your taxes, unlike in the US where you pay the taxes and have to pay separately for all the services).
  - iExploder 4y ago
    I'm not an expert on this but a quick check online and I found tax brackets for California: $35,000-$80,000 [25%] $80,000-$170,000 [28%] I'm just going to let you know that in Europe (Austria) personal income of 32,076 to 62,080 is taxed at 42% rate above 60k is taxed with 50%. And this does not include social and health insurance that is mandatory... To give you TLDR of the European experience, you look at the gross salary, multiply by 0.45 and this is the real money you would see landing in your account, .. enjoy .. :)
- nivenkos 4y ago
  Yeah, although the USA didn't get there by itself, it's built on an empire of exploitation and murder in Latin America and Asia, etc.

kypro 4y ago

I'm a contractor so no severance, although I believe severance in the UK works fairly similarly to the US (I just wouldn't know). On mortgages, I'm very worried because in the UK all mortgages are ARMs and our repayments have gone up a ton. But in addition to this so have our energy bills, and expenses generally. > Do you worry about access to high quality Healthcare? I don't have private healthcare. Unless you're very rich most people in the UK just put up with the NHS. I'm young and healthy though so almost never need it anyway. In general I don't think any worries about access to healthcare here. > Overall, do you think being in the UK makes you less worried that a layoff will leave you broke and homeless? I'll give you a long answer to this because social mobility and the affordability of homes is something I care deeply about and apparently have a controversial opinion on... But the TL;DR would be that I'm more worried about being broke, but less about being homeless than someone in a similar situation to myself living in the US. Now the long answer... The UK is weird in that if you're from a background like mine and you want a decent life (a home and family) you're generally better off not working. With the exception of myself the only people I know from my childhood who have their own homes are those without jobs and on benefits. I don't believe this is the same in the US. In the UK if you work you're unlikely to be able to afford your own home unless you have fairly wealthy parents who can give you money, or a very good job – and if you're from a council estate you're almost guaranteed to have neither. So I'm not worried about being homeless because the state will give me a home, but I often feel I'm in an impossible situation in terms of moving up the economic ladder via employment. Imo there's no real wealth mobility in the UK because we're taxed so aggressively and progressively on income. In effect the more you try to earn to not be poor the more the state will hold you back to ensure that never happens, but if you're super wealthy already then you're not taxed a penny on what you have while the poor will pay for your public services and pension via income tax and various consumption taxes. The end result is that it means the best way to be wealthy in the UK is simply to inherit it (in ways that avoid inheritance tax, obviously). Although I would acknowledge starting a business is another viable option as that way you don't need to worry about income tax – but that's obviously not easy and requires a decent amount of luck. So I think the right answer your question is that it's just different here. If you're poor the state looks after you very well in comparison to the US. I know single mums who have been given £500,000 houses to live in by the state and £30,000 a year to live on (untaxed). But if you're from a background like mine and want to work for a living there isn't a practical path to afford a £500,000 house in your 30s as a single parent – not to mention the luxury of not having to work a single day of your life for that lifestyle. Speaking purely from a personal perspective, I would I'd feel much more financially secure in the US because the tax system is fairer there. My understand is that in the US you're taxed less for trying to build wealth and I don't believe you have consumption taxes. I think this is generally why people who work hard in the US can end up wealthy, but in the UK similar things don't really happen. But I would point out that most people in the UK disagree with me on this. Those who claim to care about social mobility the most here are generally the loudest advocates for even higher levels of income tax.

Yoric 4y ago

For what it's worth, in France, you get to pick between two different packages: - high guaranteed severance (~3-5 months of salary), then benefits that quickly decrease from pretty good to rather bad for 1.5 years; - lower severance (1-2 months of salary), then high benefits for one year (nearly full pay), then low benefits for a few months. In either case, you get ~1 year of the same health care coverage as you had before layoff, then you get downgraded to cheap health care coverage. Still highly stressful, though.