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But if you took the average income of all expats in the UAE,... including laborers, housemaids, drivers, and other service workers, would you arrive at the same conclusion???

Not likely. Not even by the stretch of the imagination!!


http://gulfnews.com/business/general/ua ... d-1.677030

Agreed - most expats are poor. And the survey only speaks of 20% of expats. Besides, the income is only $250K

That article is so full of holes, its like a string vest!

No mention of the increases in 'invisible taxes' for the expat community. The statement about Qatar is just inane! Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think expats are allowed to buy property there yet. Hence the 0% investment in property.



Knight

It's printed in Gulf News so really what more can you expect. Pffff I wish I earned anywhere near that much, plus I'm sure the average maid who earns 1,200 Dhs a month doesn't factor in those figures.

I heard that an Indian construction in UAE makes nearly the same income as the British one ? after taxes and all living expenses ? considering UAE workers got free accommodation and meal some times along with transportation and health.
is it true ? I thought the pay is good considering that the UK has sat a minimum wage which I hope UAE will do soon.
No bashing intended

I seriously doubt it Kid, seeing as people who work in construction in the UK are all 'qualified' and have spent many years learning their trade.

ever one is qualified since he is working in job site ! I mean how much is the average pay for the majority there 5pound/h ?
and whats the average life expenses there,housing,transport ect

uaekid wrote:ever one is qualified since he is working in job site ! I mean how much is the average pay for the majority there 5pound/h ?
and whats the average life expenses there,housing,transport ect

Nope not here - they're all 'unskilled' labour, which means they have no formal qualifications. In the UK you have to hold things like NVQ's and have spent like 3 to 4 years at college learning your trade before you can set foot on a building site to work.

Hey Kid

A proper question deserves a proper answer

The minimum wage for 21+ is I think nearer £6 ph (unskilled) but there are only a limited number of totally unskilled jobs on a UK building site. (17 - 21 year olds is in the area of £5 - £6)

The UK average wage, and that includes building sites equates to around £13 ph.

This is for a 35 hour week, as soon as that is exceeded, time and a half kicks in so that rate goes to an average of £19.50 ph

If you assume that a the labourer pays no more than 20% tax, and gets all basic allowances then the average workers take home pay is in the region of £1,750 per month

You will know from experience that building projects are seldom delivered on time and to budget so the amount of overtime these guys can earn rockets and I don't think I have ever heard of a UK builder earning minimum wage or less than the national average.

Whether or not they get lunch and a bed to share or not, which some do if they are working on jobs a long way from home, is irrelevant, it is the fact that the Governments Health and Safety Executive set strict guidelines around what is acceptable practice on a building site that ensures their safety.

Each step of "being a builder" is documented and relevant qualifications (paperwork) awarded, this means there should be no way to engage a building company that is staffed by a gang of labourers from a farm in Kerela. NOTE: the UK building trade has its fair share of cowboys - companies that are unqualified and generally incapable of carrying out the projects assigned to them, but if you are dumb enough not to research the background of a provider then thats your problem, caveat emptor (buyer beware).

VK

i would respectfully disagree with some of your views and in particular the construction industry. The average wage in building / construction is nowhere near £13ph. You have not factored in that the construction industry is now flooded with eastern european labourers that work for near on minimum wage (£5.70 ph i think).

To earn or "take home" a salary of around £1750 a month would equate to a annual salary of £27,300 per annum. VK you are way way off the mark if you think this is anywhere near an average salary. To give some examples of public sector salaries

Newly Qualified Teacher £21k
Newly Qualified Social Worker £24
Average local gov officer £15k

Private Sector
Average Bank Cashier (big 4) 14k -16k
Postman £18k
Shop worker £10k- 15k

Just a small selection but i think it gives a fair viewpoint of current salaries. It should be noted that these salaries quoted DO NOT include the deduction of tax @ 20% and NI Contributions @ 11%.

One of the biggest builders in the UK, Connaught, is on the brink of bankruptcy, and 10000 UK employees are about to lose their jobs, according to BBC news tonight. I don't think any of the workers interviewwd tonight earned anything like £27k and they were mostly English. I would be surprised if they earned £17K.

I based these figures on

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=285

Which I agree are surprisingly higher than the jobs that you quoted, but on the basis that the figures are generated by the Office of National Stats that uses the figures from HMRC.

I do agree that the buiding trade is "awash" with former eastern European labour, but the rates that they get are still priced by skill provided rather than the minimum rate. I find it amusing that they are going back home now because the exchange rate now means that they get paid more in Poland than in England

My back of a fag packet calculation to work out how much the take home is based on

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rates/it.htm

£ 0 - £ 6,475 (personal allowance) = 0%
£ 2,440 = 10%
£ 8,915 - £ 37,400 = 20%
£ 37,400 - £ 150,000 = 40%

which means that on a national average salary of £ 25,428 the employee pays a total of £3,546 in tax and £ 1,816 in NI giving a corrected monthly of £ 1,672

(yes I did break out Excel to test this )

You are correct in saying that my intial quote was wrong (but not by much) but as a measure of what a building site brick layer gets here in the UK vs what a guy working on a tower block in Dubai gets its a dribble in the ocean, AED 1,500 p.m. vs, AED 9,413 (after tax)(at todays rate 5.63)

The AED 1,500 is based on what my Nakheel employed gardener (with 12 years experience on UAE building sites) was paid per month, and I know for a fact that today he gets less than AED 1,200 p.m. (hence the gardening!)

Hope your feeling ok and coping ... all the best

This is just the building trade.

I met a Philipina qualified nursery nurse the other day who is paid 450Dhs a month!
No housing, no free transport.
She lives with her aunt and moonlights part time as a maid. She can earn 800Dhs a month working in her spare time.

If the government introduces a minimum wage in her sector here, her employer has told her they will have to fire her as they can't afford to pay her more.

I have a mind to find out where she works and report them to the Labour Office as this is slavery.



Knight

Thats appalling, but sadly not a surprise or anything new.

Those that I have spoken to in the past are praying for the day they are fired and repatriated !

DK, for certain nationalities there actually are minimun wages as set by their embassies. You should talk to this woman as the minimum wage set for them is I think around 1,400 Dhs a month.

Tom Jones wrote:But if you took the average income of all expats in the UAE,... including laborers, housemaids, drivers, and other service workers, would you arrive at the same conclusion???

Not likely. Not even by the stretch of the imagination!!


http://gulfnews.com/business/general/ua ... d-1.677030

I actually searched for the survey, here's the link:-
http://www.offshore.hsbc.com/1/2/intern ... sults-2010

Check this out, the survey reaches out to respondents in over a 100 countries. The sample size of the survey in Brazil was a whopping 29 respondents(they had to omit Brazil. So much for efficiency!). Any-way's the overall sample size in over a 100 countries gives you a princely figure of 4,127 expats.

Some of the rather peculiar tid-bits,

The regional tables in,
North America places Mexico above Canada
Asia-Pacific ranks Philippines above China, Australia, Honk Kong and India

Wonder why so many Filipinos and Mexicans are so hell-bent on catching that one way ticket out!!!

The News week survey which recently came out ranking the world's best countries is probably a better indicator of critical issues governing countries,

http://www.newsweek.com/feature/2010/th ... tries.html

This survey touches on various points from education, to healthcare, to economic dynamism , quality of life etc etc