Junior Doctors can't do maths

 In the UK, the Junior Doctor's strike shows no sign of ending. 

They claim they are poorly paid - placards claiming it's £15 per hour. Well what is the reality?

The pay scale is public information so let's do some analysis. First let's gather the facts:

Foundation Doctor Year 1 (FY1) has a salary of £32,398

Foundation Doctor Year 2 (FY2) has a salary of £37,303  

You can still be considered a Junior Doctor when your salary is £63,152

Their contracted hours are 40 hours per week + 8 hours overtime.  There are additional weekend allowances, night work enhancement, on-call availability allowance etc.

6 weeks holiday per year  (30 days) + 8 public holidays.  If you have to work on a public holidays you get 2 days in lieu.

Where does the £15/hour claim come from?

If we take a year 1 Junior doctor - someone straight from University with little experience - then their salary is £32,988. 

Someone has assumed they work 52 weeks per year for 5 days per week.  So 260 working days per year 8 hours per day.

So £32,988 / (260*8) = £15.57 per hour.

The reality is they have generous holiday allowance of 30 days + 8 public holidays. They are not working these days and if they do -  they get generous payments or days in lieu.  

So how many days are they actually working? 

260 days - 30 - 8 = 222 days

So their real salary is £32,988 / 222 = £18.24 per hour.

What other benefits do they get?

In the commercial world, it is rare to find employers offering final salary pensions however Junior Doctors get a final salary pension. 

So how much is the employer pension contribution?  The current rate until 31st March 2024 is 20.6% of salary. 

So a year 1 doctor's package is actually much bigger than the salary.   The employer contributions are 20% of the 40 hours per week base salary. 

Again compare this with the commercial world where the statutory employer contribution is 3% towards employee pensions.

So deducting the 3% employer statutory contribution, the Junior Doctors package is 17% bigger.

The real package is £32,988 *1.17 = £37,905

Based on the 8 hours per day for  222 days per year = 1,776 hours per year then the real hourly rate is £21.34 per hour.

The typical starting salary in the UK for a graduate is £33,229 so this is above this.

Everyone's off to Australia

The news suggests that UK Junior Doctors are leaving for Australia so what is the package in Australia? 

The Australia pay grade PGY3 (F3) is around A$96,000 per year.  

Note the UK salary for F3 is £44,171 or higher + 20% employer pension contributions (17% higher than statutory).

So AUD$96,000 is £49,900 per year. 

The Australian scheme requires the employer to pay 10.5% of salary into the pension.  They call this Super Annuation or "Super".

So let's compare these packages side-by-side

I've assumed the full 20% of employer pension contribution above for a fair comparison as there is no statutory minimum in Australia.  So a junior doctor would be better off by about 4% in Australia.

It should be pointed out that the cost of living in Australia is higher than the UK.

Consumer Prices in Australia are 14.0% higher than in United Kingdom (without rent)

Rent Prices in Australia are 9.4% higher than in United Kingdom

Groceries Prices in Australia are 32.9% higher than in United Kingdom

So overall relocating to Australia for "better money" is not really viable.

Australian doctors get 5 weeks (25 days of holiday) + 7 public holidays = 32 days compared to 38 days with the NHS. If you factor in you worked the additional 6 days in the UK  (which you would be paid for) then there's very little difference between the UK and Australian packages.

Factoring  in the higher cost of living in Australia, overall you would be worse off financially but you might have more sunshine! 

What's the answer?

It's clear that overall the package to Junior Doctors is actually comparable to Australia where doctors are allegedly defecting to. 

The doctors demand for a 35% increase is totally unrealistic.  Out of interest the relative rates versus consultants has been set by the BMA - the same organisation that insisted that consultants be highly paid at the expense of junior doctors !

The problem is that Junior Doctors (in fact probably most NHS staff) don't value the pension or are unaware of the value of it.  Sadly the NHS pension scheme is not really fully funded and tax payers have to pitch in for the shortfall.

The simple answer is to scrap the final salary pension, create a workplace pension, give NHS staff the additional 17% employer pension contributions as part of their salary. NHS staff can consciously decide what they want to do with the 17% - take it as salary or make voluntary pension contributions.

Problem solved.

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July 2025

Well the Junior Doctors are back on strike after Wes Streeting caved in and gave them a 22% pay increase in 2024 and an inflation busting pay increase of 5.4% in 2025.  This increase is not just linked to their salary but their gold played final salary pension.

Their entry level package was £37,905 which increased to £46,244 in 2024 and increases to £48,741 - all this with no strings attached.

This is for someone straight out of University.

Now they are demanding a further 29% increase.  In other words an inexperienced Doctor is demanding a £62,876 package.

It seems that the level of maths of Doctors has not improved.  They claim this is a £23/hr wage.

So they actually work 222 days per year (excluding overtime).  They work 8 hours a day (unless they do overtime). So that's 1,776 hours per year.

So if Labour cave in their hourly rate will be £35.40 per hour rather than £23 per hour.

They are currently on £27.44 per hour.  

Looks like they need to go back to primary school and learn some basic maths skills.

They are demanding that their student loans be written off. 

I can understand why they are saying this.  Before the increase they were paying £75 per month in student loan repayments (which would never be repaid in their working life). With their massive 22% increase they ended up paying £137 per month. They still wouldnt pay off their student loan in their working life.