‘It shouldn’t be like this’: Full-time workers relying on food handouts amid cost of living crisis
At a community food table in Staffordshire, produce is being handed out for free.
“I need to come here otherwise we’d be living on bread,” Rebecca Flynn told Sky News.
The 51-year-old said: “I’m earning pretty decent money, but it’s not enough.”
Rebecca Flynn
It gives you an insight into just how deeply the cost of living crisis is biting – because Rebecca is working full-time as an office manager for a day service for people with learning difficulties.
On top of that, she has a second job going door-to-door on evenings and weekends, selling cosmetics and homeware.
“There’s nothing more I can do. Unless I win the lottery or get another job. It should be noticed that people are in this state,” she says.
“Local councils, local governments, they need to see what’s going on, come to ground level. It’s 2025. It shouldn’t be like this.”
But it’s not just Rebecca working all hours and needing food handouts to survive.
Alex Chapman is the co-founder of the Norton Canes Community Food Table, and says a third of the people who use it are working full-time.
“It’s mad that you’re working a good job and you think you’d be able to afford everything and go on holiday and everything like that, but in reality they’re struggling to put food on the table,” he says.
“We’re seeing a massive increase in the people that are using the food table. We see them in their work outfits. Professionals, nurses – you don’t expect them to be struggling because they’re working full-time. People who aren’t working – you expect them to be struggling. But it’s across the board.”
Cannock Chase
The food table is in Cannock Chase.
Sky News analysis of local authorities gives an insight into why people are feeling dissatisfied their salaries are no longer delivering the comfortable lifestyles they thought hard work and a good job would deliver.
Over the past few years, Cannock Chase has gone from being a middle-class part of Britain to one of the lowest-earning areas in the UK.
In 2021, UK average annual salaries were just short of £26,000 – Cannock Chase was almost identical, according to Sky News analysis of Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Since then, the UK average wage has increased by 21.6% – or more than £5,000 a year – keeping pace with high inflation.
But in Cannock Chase, salaries have only risen by 8.4% – meaning on average people are now £300 worse off per month than the average worker across the UK.
SEE HOW YOUR AREA HAS COPED WITH THE COST OF LIVING CRISIS
It won’t have escaped your attention that prices have gone up, by a lot – by a fifth since 2021, the highest sustained rate since the 1990s – with some of the biggest rises among essentials like energy and food.
But, across the whole country, wages have actually done a pretty good job at keeping up with inflation. The problem is that the wage increase is an average, made up of highs and lows, while the price rises affect us more uniformly.
That means if you haven’t had a pay-rise, you will quite quickly find that you can’t afford as many of the things you used to.
People in places like Brentwood in Essex, the Cotswolds in rural Gloucestershire, and Melton in Leicestershire, have seen their wages increase at twice the rate of prices in the last few years, on average.
But on the other end of the scale are places like Cannock Chase, where inflation has been more than double the rate of wage increases.
It used to be a place where average earnings pretty much exactly reflected the UK midpoint. Now, people in Cannock are about £300 worse-off every month than the average person.
See how your area compares with our look-up.
Louise Schwartz, who has two children, describes herself as middle-class. After 20 years in the classroom she now has three jobs, working 50 hours a week as a teaching coach, at a software firm and giving private music lessons.
Her husband is an estate agent. They have a mortgage and three cars and together earn around £80,000 a year.
She says the family loves travelling together but can’t afford to go on holiday this year: “It makes me feel sad for my kids, more than anything, that we can’t give them a week away.
“We have food on the table, we’ve got heating, we’ve got cars to drive. But there are definitely some luxuries that we’ve cut back on recently.
“We don’t do expensive supermarkets. We don’t do expensive brands. We do whatever’s on offer for that particular week. My eldest son has started driving, which has then had an impact on my daughter’s horse-riding lessons.”
Louise Schwartz
Louise adds that the family have a hot tub in the garden that they bought years ago, but because of the cost of electricity, they don’t use it.
I ask her: “What does it say that a teacher and an estate agent both working full time can’t afford to go on holiday this year?”
She replies: “I think a lot of people might not be surprised by that because I think people are probably in a similar position but maybe we just don’t talk about it.”
Full-time workers tell us again and again they thought their lifestyles would be more comfortable – that the work ethic would be delivering more than it is.
Heidi Boot
It seems the dissatisfaction is not only what one person described as “robbing Peter to pay Paul”, but also the lack of what people refer to as “pleasure money”.
Heidi Boot is what you might call the backbone of the middle classes – running a small business full-time called HB Aesthetics, a salon that does eyebrows, eyelashes and nails.
“I feel like everybody is stretching their appointments. People are working so hard for their money and they’ve got nothing to show for it. They’ve paid all their bills and now they’ve got nothing left to spend on themselves,” she says.
“It shouldn’t be that way. But because I see it all the time I feel like it’s just the normal now.”
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The constituency of Cannock Chase has always voted the way of the country – and at the last election showed significant support for Reform.
The financial woes will worry the government, which insists it’s taking action to give workers more money in their pockets.
But there’s no denying the despairing mood of middle England in the political battlegrounds that brought Labour to power.
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The average two-year mortgage rate has fallen below 5% for the first time since the Liz Truss mini-budget.
The interest rate charged on a typical two-year fixed mortgage deal is now 4.99%, according to financial information company Moneyfacts.
It means there are more expensive and also cheaper two-year mortgage products on the market, but the average has fallen to a near three-year low.
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Not since September 2022 has the average been at this level, before former prime minister Liz Truss announced her so-called mini-budget.
The programme of unfunded spending and tax cuts, done without the commentary of independent watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility, led to a steep rise in the cost of government borrowing and necessitated an intervention by monetary regulator the Bank of England to prevent a collapse of pension funds.
It was also a key reason mortgage costs rose as high as they did – up to 6% for a typical two-year deal in the weeks after the mini-budget.
Why?
The mortgage borrowing rate dropped on Wednesday as the base interest rate – set by the Bank of England – was cut last week to 4%. The reduction made borrowing less expensive, as signs of a struggling economy were evident to the rate-setting central bankers and despite inflation forecast to rise further.
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Bank of England cuts interest rate
It’s that expectation of elevated price rises that has stopped mortgage rates from falling further. The Bank had raised interest rates and has kept them comparatively high as inflation is anticipated to rise faster due to poor harvests and increased employer costs, making goods more expensive.
The group behind the figures, Moneyfacts, said “While the cost of borrowing is still well above the rock-bottom rates of the years immediately preceding that fiscal event, this milestone shows lenders are competing more aggressively for business.”
In turn, mortgage providers are reluctant to offer cheaper products.
A further cut to the base interest rate is expected before the end of 2025, according to London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) data. Traders currently bet the rate will be brought to 3.75% in December.
This expectation can influence what rates lenders offer.
For around 700,000 teenagers on the treadmill that is the English education system, the A and T-level results that drop this week may be the most important step of all.
They matter because they open the door to higher education, and a crucial life decision based on an unwritten contract that has stood since the 1960s: the better the marks, the greater the choice of institution and course available to applicants, and in due course, the value of the degree at the end of it.
A quarter of a century after Tony Blair set a target of 50% of school-leavers going to university, however, the fundamentals of that deal have been transformed.
Today’s prospective undergraduates face rising costs of tuition and debt, new labour market dynamics, and the uncertainties of the looming AI revolution.
Together, they pose a different question: Is going to university still worth it?
Students at Plantsbrook School in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham, look at their A-level results in 2024. File pic: PA
Huge financial costs
Of course, the value of the university experience and the degree that comes with it cannot be measured by finances alone, but the costs are unignorable.
For today’s students, the universal free tuition and student grants enjoyed by their parents’ generation have been replaced by annual fees that increase to £9,500 this year.
Living costs meanwhile will run to at least £61,000 over three years, according to new research.
Together, they will leave graduates saddled with average debts of £53,000, which, under new arrangements, they repay via a “graduate tax” of 9% on their earnings above £25,000 for up to 40 years.
A squeezed salary gap
As well as rising fees and costs of finance, graduates will enter a labour market in which the financial benefits of a degree are less immediately obvious.
Graduates do still enjoy a premium on starting salaries, but it may be shrinking thanks to advances in the minimum wage.
The Institute of Student Employers says the average graduate starting salary was £32,000 last year, though there is a wide variation depending on career.
File pic: PA
With the minimum wage rising 6% to more than £26,000 this April, however, the gap to non-degree earners may have reduced.
A reduction in earning power may be compounded by the phenomenon of wage compression, which sees employers having less room to increase salaries across the pay scale because the lowest, compulsory minimum level has risen fast.
Taken over a career, however, the graduate premium remains unarguable.
Government data shows a median salary for all graduates aged 16-64 in 2024 of £42,000 and £47,000 for post-graduates, compared to £30,500 for non-graduates.
Graduates are also more likely to be in employment and in highly skilled jobs.
There is also little sign of buyer’s remorse.
A University of Bristol survey of more than 2,000 graduates this year found that, given a second chance, almost half would do the same course at the same institution.
And while a quarter would change course or university, only 3% said they would have skipped higher education.
Students receive their A-level results at Ark Globe Academy in London last year. File pic: PA
No surprise then that industry body Universities UK believes the answer to the question is an unequivocal “yes”, even if the future of graduate employment remains unclear.
“This is a decision every individual needs to take for themselves; it is not necessarily the right decision for everybody. More than half the 18-year-old population doesn’t progress to university,” says chief executive Vivienne Stern.
“But if you look at it from a purely statistical point of view, there is absolutely no question that the majority who go to university benefit not only in terms of earnings.”
‘Roll with the punches’
She is confident that graduates will continue to enjoy the benefits of an extended education even if the future of work is profoundly uncertain.
“I think now more than ever you need to have the resilience that you acquire from studying at degree level to roll with the punches.
“If the labour market changes under you, you might need to reinvent yourself several times during your career in order to be able to ride out changes that are difficult to predict. That resilience will hold its value.”
The greatest change is likely to come from AI, the emerging technology whose potential to eat entry-level white collar jobs may be fulfilled even faster than predicted.
The recruitment industry is already reporting a decline in graduate-level posts.
A maths exam in progress at Pittville High School, Cheltenham.
File pic: PA
Anecdotally, companies are already banking cuts to legal, professional, and marketing spend because an AI can produce the basic output almost instantly, and for free.
That might suggest a premium returning to non-graduate jobs that remain beyond the bots. An AI might be able to pull together client research or write an ad, but as yet, it can’t change a washer or a catheter.
It does not, however, mean the degree is dead, or that university is worthless, though the sector will remain under scrutiny for the quality and type of courses that are offered.
The government is in the process of developing a new skills agenda with higher education at its heart, but second-guessing what the economy will require in a year, never mind 10, has seldom been harder.
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Universities will be crucial to producing the skilled workers the UK needs to thrive, from life sciences to technology, but reducing students to economic units optimised by “high value” courses ignores the unquantifiable social, personal, and professional benefits going to university can bring.
In a time when culture wars are played out on campus, it is also fashionable to dismiss attendance at all but the elite institutions on proven professional courses as a waste of time and money. (A personal recent favourite came from a columnist with an Oxford degree in PPE and a career as an economics lecturer.)
The reality of university today means that no student can afford to ignore a cost-benefit analysis of their decision, but there is far more to the experience than the job you end up with. Even AI agrees.
Ask ChatGPT if university is still worth it, and it will tell you: “That depends on what you mean by worth – financially, personally, professionally – because each angle tells a different story.”
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