Public Sector Pay & Pensions - Time For Reality?

Frere

So which gold plated public sector pension is this you mention, or is it simply anecdotal - context dear boy context.

Faust

You can hardly call mid-band 8 salaries as average 'shop floor staff' though can you?

IronGiant

Errr I've already given a clear example.

Police pensions.

The police pensions scheme 2015 member’s guide - GOV.UK

Main features.

Retire at 55 on 35/70 of CARE* salary (assuming 35 years service)
4 x annual pension as a tax free lump sum
Index linked
Dependents benefits
No investment risk
Max contribution is 13.8% of salary.

*Career Average but with some tinkering which improves the final figure.

To get a comparable private pension is almost impossible. For one thing, it would require a pension pot larger than that permitted by HMRC.

Rasczak

Curious how everyone is stating their personal experience as obvious fact of what's going on, whole regions of the uk boomed after 2008, go visit Aberdeen, it had a party right up until the 2014 oil crash, other industries involved in export also have done rather well since 2008.

The graph on page 13 here shows how private sector saving per employee has remained static at £3k since 2006, meanwhile public sector has increased from about £6k to £7.5k

It's pretty clear public section pensions have done ok vs private since 2006.

In general automatic enrolment is messing up figures over the last few years and many employers will now rather than being able to offer pay increases, will have to do pay freezes as the pension contribution amount ticks up each year.

IronGiant

It was half final salary based on 40 years service, nice for those on professorial salaries but less cosy for technical grades.

Rasczak

£23k is barely over national UK living wage.

(NB: Can we de-latch the rest of the conversation from IG's finances - he kindly gave us an example of a small portion of his finances but it is not right to put him in a position where he might feel compelled to share more data online than he should/would be happy with).

IronGiant

Thank you  

Rasczak

The average salary is £27600. A £23k pension is very good if the original salary was 'modest'.

But fair point to stop using IG as a reference.

Faust

Which brings us back to the point others have made - that public sector jobs are lower paid than they should be and but are partly compensated for at the pension point. That doesn't make the pension 'gold-plated' - it just means for those in the private sector the onus is on them to do a little more in the short term to secure their long term.

Faust

Alpha generous - please do me a favour.  The one I have was much better then Alpha and fortunately I was able to keep it.  Alpha is a career average rip off.  Higher employee contributions for a poorer return.

http://www.civilservicepensionscheme.org.uk/media/95349/alpha_fullschemeguide_colour_v3.pdf