Statistics on Britons

When the 1st National Management Salary Survey was published in 1973, the average employee earned £2,500 per annum, drove a Ford Cortina and lived in a house that cost just £10,700. Benny Hill was the most popular TV entertainer and calculators and golfball typewriters were the last word in chic.

In 1998, with the publication of the 25th survey, the average employee earned £15,500, drove a Ford Fiesta and could buy a house for £68,500. Soaps ruled on the box, with East Enders the most popular show, and a mobile phone and internet addresses were absolutely essential. A lot of Britons owned video recorders, CDs and labour saving devices such as dishwashers.

Home life was very different in 1973. Only 49% of homes had a telephone – figure which went up to 93 per cent in 1998. Seventy four per cent had a washing machine (1998: 90%) and 30% had colour TV (1998: 97%).

Looking at management pay, in 1973 the average manager earned £5,000 a year – twice the average earnings – and the average director earned £11,000 – more than four times the national average. In 1998, the average manager earned £36,000, just over twice the national average, while the director’s average was £93,787 a year, six times the national figure.

In 1973, 56% of households ran a car, compared with more than 70 per cent twenty-five years later. The most popular car, the Ford Cortina, cost £1,227. An equivalent model of the 1998 most popular car, the Ford Fiesta, cost just over £10,000.

The average house price in Britain in 1973 was £10,700 - just over four times average earnings - in 1998 it was £68,500 - nearly four and a half times average earnings. But the structure of society also changed. Twenty-five years ago half the households in Britain were made up of one or two people. The rest were in households of three or more. In 1998, 63 per cent of households were one or two persons and only 37% had three or more.

The character and culture of the workforce changed significantly. In 1973, the labour force was made up of 63 per cent of men and 37 per cent of women. The number of women managers was negligible, comprising less than two per cent of the two million managers in the UK. Twenty-five years later, half the workforce were women and the proportion of women managers was approaching one in five (18 per cent).

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