Sunday, September 14, 2014

The Endies Trend

The "Endies" – Employed but with No Disposable Income or Savings.

"Endies" are struggling to make ends meet and few are managing to save. London has now about a million such workers.

A report from the Centre for London, “Hollow Promise: How London is Failing its Modest Earners and What Can Be Done About it”, notes:
 "While 'endies' don't complain, they are increasingly disenchanted with the political system. Unless London does better by them, the city's politics could easily turn sour...They feel they are overlooked and betrayed. There is an underbelly of quiet resentment building up."

In the capital because rents are around 50% higher than in the rest of the UK. For households with incomes between £20,800 and £28,500 a year, rental costs have risen 4% in real terms over the last decade. Rent now accounts for about 41% of their incomes. "Endies" who do not own a home have almost no chance of buying one. "There are now only three boroughs – Tower Hamlets, Newham and Barking and Dagenham – where home ownership is potentially affordable for two people earning that borough's median wage," the report says.

Between 2008 and 2014 trips using pay-as-you-go Oyster cards rose in price by 61% for bus journeys and 47% for the underground. A zone four resident on an annual salary of £22,000 spends the first 55 minutes of their working day just paying for their commute to and from work.

Between 2001 and 2011, the average London fuel bill rose by more than 50% above inflation.

Nursery care for a child under the age of two is 25% more expensive in London than elsewhere in Britain. A London couple with one child need a second earner with wages of at least £17,000 to make full-time childcare cost-neutral.

Charles Leadbeater, the report's author, said few "endies" could leave the capital. "The vicious combination of very flexible and competitive labour markets and a very distorted housing market means they're not just under pressure but trapped....Zone 1 inside the Circle Line will become like Dubai. It will be inhabited only by cosmopolitan people who come to London to spend money."

from here

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