Are wages the most important considerations for workers?

While most adults need to earn an income from work in order to support their housing, food and other needs it has been argued that in the face of the ongoing struggle many businesses are recruiting in finding suitable employees other factors are becoming more important.

Focus groups conducted by one national UK newspaper have revealed that the friendships built at work, the work environment, variety in work and flexibility to enable people to fit work around their lives are increasingly important.

“New work from the London School of Economics uses workers’ self-assessed life satisfaction to estimate the non-pecuniary rewards of different occupations.”

They found that there was no direct correlation between higher pay as a compensation for more unpleasant work: “non-pecuniary rewards are generally positively correlated with earnings (with notable exceptions – some low-paid agricultural work boosts wellbeing more than other low wage roles)”

Opportunities to study and gain higher qualifications, gender and ethnicity pay gaps and other factors also all play a part and may affect how difficult businesses may find recruiting staff.

Clearly pay is not the only factor in the equation.