British Social Attitudes survey reports record-low job satisfaction

Top-decile pay rose 7.3% as bottom-decile pay rose 1.1%

The British Social Attitudes survey, described in Polly Toynbee’s Guardian column as the nation’s long-running annual measure of attitudes, found growing job dissatisfaction in its report published Nov. 3. Toynbee said Britain was unhappier at work than at any point since records began. She said people complained about a lack of flexibility in working hours, a lack of career advancement and a lack of pay rises.

A Reuters photograph by Darren Staples accompanying the column showed Andy Burnham visiting the Rolls-Royce factory in Derby the previous week.

Despite the dissatisfaction, John Curtice, editor of the week’s British Social Attitudes findings, said the work ethic was as strong as ever and that people felt work mattered beyond money. He said only 4% would choose not to work if they could, while 2% of young people gave the same answer. The survey also said: “The proportion willing to work harder than required to help their employer succeed has fallen to its lowest-ever level over the past decade.”

Economist Paul Johnson told Toynbee that pay stagnation over the last decade was unprecedented since Napoleonic times, then corrected himself: “You might as well say ever.”

Resolution Foundation’s Mike Brewer said pay inequality had jumped over the last year for the first time in a decade. Pay for the top 10% rose 7.3%, compared with 1.1% for the bottom 10%. Toynbee attributed the difference to the national living wage having stopped rising faster than median pay and to top pay accelerating again. She said the gap in pay rises was the highest ever recorded.

Toynbee said the top 1% owned more than the combined wealth of the bottom half. She described Britain’s extreme inequality as the highest in western Europe and said it had never fallen after rising sharply in the 1980s. She said people might forget the disparity when incomes are rising, while most now saw no upturn on the horizon. The survey found that support for government action to shrink the gap between rich and poor had risen from 25% in 2006 to 53% by the time of the findings.

Toynbee said the decline in expectations of career advancement, from 35% to 26%, reflected a sense among hard-working people that they were under-rewarded. She placed that decline against steep upward mobility in the 1950s and 60s, including for early school leavers, as white-collar, admin, skilled and managerial jobs expanded. Toynbee directed readers to social historian David Kynaston’s book Deep into the Sixties for statistics and personal stories about opportunities for the “bright but unqualified.”

Toynbee said more educated young people, with exam results to prove it, now had less chance than their parents of making progress and were likely to earn and own less. She called that combination a “recipe for social disaster” and asked what could be done as improvements in growth, productivity and pay eluded governments throughout Europe.

Entrepreneur Alan Sugar, whom Toynbee called the “poster boy” for that lost world, went from a Hackney market trader to a billionaire. He accused young people of “a lack of hunger, wanting a quick fix, not wanting to put the graft in and get there through hard work”. Toynbee wrote that his television series, The Apprentice, may influence his generation to despise young people, whom she said may be ignorant of what has changed since his day.

Toynbee argued that Labour’s best hope for easing the country’s national discouragement was to roll out better working rights. She said the flagship policy in Labour’s 2024 manifesto brings greater control over hours and increased protection from heavy-handed employers. The British Social Attitudes survey found that 61% of people considered it important to decide their own working hours, but only 31% said they could do so in their jobs. Toynbee said the issue affected everyone in both high- and low-level jobs, including people balancing childcare, school drop-off times and commuting costs. She said people in those jobs were counting every £1 in commuting costs from a home chosen as the cheaper option because it was farther away. Toynbee said she had encountered a case over the weekend in which a management’s sudden, arbitrary order to return to the office upended precariously balanced household finances.

Toynbee said stronger rights to request flexible hours or more working from home would come next year. Employers would then have to give highly specific business reasons for refusing a request, rather than simply state that working from the office was better. Employees would have the right to a face-to-face consultation and could bring a union representative or fellow worker.

Toynbee said new working rights came into force last Friday, allowing trade union representatives to visit every workplace to recruit. She listed every KFC and McDonald’s, every care home and every office, high and low, as workplaces where employees could discuss their working lives without fear of reprisal. She said joining a union could open new avenues for employees to resolve workplace grievances. Toynbee said Labour’s package also called for banning exploitative zero-hours arrangements and introducing guaranteed contracts so workers would know their schedules and what they would earn.

A YouGov poll for Acas, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, found that 78% of people wanted flexible working. Toynbee said support extended even among Conservative and Reform voters. The Confederation of British Industry, British Chambers of Commerce and Institute of Directors warned that more rights would mean fewer jobs.

Toynbee wrote that Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch “turns a tin ear to public opinion.” Badenoch said Labour’s rights were “designed to drag Britain back to a world where unions call the shots and employers carry the blame.” She also said: “At the first opportunity, a Conservative government under my leadership will repeal every job-destroying, anti-business, anti-growth measure in this bill …” Toynbee said Badenoch might regret the pledge by the next election.

Toynbee argued that no government could protect its people from what she called “the vortex in the White House and his economy-killing war.” She credited Andy Burnham with trying to address the national discouragement and said Angela Rayner’s stubborn determination had defended workers’ rights reforms against doubters around Keir Starmer. Toynbee said people might see their working lives improving just when that was most needed.