When I was younger, I was always hearing about “yuppies” (young, urban professionals), a prosperous class of upwardly mobile, status-chasing people working in major cities. It was already a vintage term by the time I was conscious of it, it having been forged in the 1980s, when these people were viewed as the major beneficiaries of Margaret Thatcher’s “big bang”. Now it’s disappeared altogether. Instead, these days you hear about the white-collar “Henrys” (high-earning, not rich yet) – a cohort near-identical in demographic, profession and status-obsession, but who are now apparently the overlooked, and the hard-done-by, of our current political settlement.
One of the big contentions for Henrys, as you may have learned recently, is the claim that a £100,000 salary no longer pays; in fact, it is at this point that they face a financial double whammy. High earners lose £1 from their personal allowance for every £2 they earn over £100,000, meaning that more of their salary will be taxed at a higher rate. It is also at this salary point that Henrys in England lose access to 30 hours of free childcare for children aged between nine months and four years old, and £2,000 per year for under-12s. Add to this that these Henrys who started university after 2006 are more likely to be paying off their entire student loan for longer, and there are clear incentives against higher earnings after a certain point.
The consequence is that these people, feeling that the harder work is not worth the additional burden, apparently now shun promotions, work fewer hours or “salary sacrifice” into their pension pots (a practice that will be curtailed in 2029 due to changes made in the last budget).
Tiny violin stuff, surely. Who wants to cry for these people? First off, this “debate” around whether £100,000 pays enough is clearly specific to London and the south-east of England. It would be ludicrous to most people living in, say, Bolton or Liverpool, where such a salary would afford you your pick of house and a more plush lifestyle, to think it represents a kind of struggle. And sure, even those of us in London will find it obnoxious that a £100,000 salary, only enjoyed by the top 4% of earners, is being trotted out as a symbol of economic injustice – especially since the median annual earnings for full-time workers in the UK is £39,039, with rates of in-work poverty increasing.
Putting aside the fantasies of what I, a single gay man who has a love affair with designer shoes, would do with such a salary, I do think that underneath this ridiculous-seeming complaint there is an interesting truth about what it now means to build a good life in England’s capital, and how living standards have downgraded for almost all of us.
To be absolutely clear, I am not a Henry. But I am interested in what the frustration at what most would consider a high salary actually says about life in London. While I personally believe that childcare hours, along with other provisions for children, should be universal and not means-tested, these are not a lifetime expense. Where you would feel the constraints of this salary, dependants or not, are in housing, if you are living in London or the south-east of England. The capital-dwelling Henry will have, at some point, endured the cowboy rental market, giving away much of their earnings in rent. Then, when in a position to consider buying a property, they will face an average house price of £553,000.
When Henry finally saves up the deposit to escape the rental market, they will find that their options for home ownership are significantly downgraded compared with what they might have bought on a comparable or lesser salary 30 years ago, considering that income has not kept pace with rising house prices. Henry may have to settle for a leasehold flat, where they face escalating and unpredictable ground rent and service charge increases.
Once, the young urban professional had the assumption of a smooth transition to parenthood and family life. Now they are delaying the milestones that their parents will have embraced more readily. And this is the rub: perceptions of wealth matter. If one generation can compare their lot with another’s and find themselves worse off, they will feel hard done by.
London-dwelling Henry may, rightly, not be the first or even second object of our sympathies. They will still have a nice life, and perhaps need to adjust their expectations. Maybe they will have to move out of London to a more affordable area. But there is a balance between what is simply an adjustment of lifestyle if you want to buy a house or have children (fewer meals out, Zara boots rather than Bottega), and what is cold reality: that the lifestyle and material circumstances older generations accessed on a good wage are now out of orbit for those even on an excellent one.
So this looks and feels like a very limited grievance, but it’s indicative of an economy that is working for fewer and fewer of us. That has consequences for the aspirations of the young. Why go to university? Why move to the big city to make yourself in your field? Why work hard if the reward is increasingly diminished? And a bigger question – what will happen politically, and who will be the casualties, when this cohort of Henrys have their revenge?
Jason Okundaye is an assistant opinion editor at the Guardian
