It transpires the mean salary for Birkenhead is £428 a month, ie 50% of the employed people in Birkenhead are earning £428 a month or less. This was the lowest for the country.

To me that would indicate that many are trapped in part time jobs, to give some ideas of how low this is ....

An apprentice on a disgusting minimum of £3.70/hr working 40 hours a week would get £641/mth

An over-25 earning national living wage (£7.83/hr) for 40 hours a week would get £1375/mth

A single pensioner gets a minimum of £706 a month.

Married pensioners get a minimum of £539/mth each

The Government love part time jobs, they get more people off the unemployment register than if most people worked full time.

It also transpires that the average mortgage payments for Birkenhead was £905/mth.

The Government and the Council should take strong note of these figures (problems like this are part of their job to sort out), it can only lead to people getting further and further into crippling debt.

SOURCE

Poor town in low wages shocker. Hardly surprising in the least.

Not really a low wage problem causing this unless they are paying less than minimum/living wage.

Where do you get the figures from, married pensioners do not get a minimum of £539.00 each, if you have been on a state pension for a few years , you don't get these figures

If your total pension(s) is(are) as a couple less than £1078 then you are entitled to pension credit which tops it up to £1078 for a couple.

I misled slightly by putting "£539/mth each" as the couple's pension credit isn't calculated or paid individually but I needed to keep it in context with the other figures for comparison purposes. I could have left it out which would have strengthened my argument unfairly.

Agree with both of your points BUT this is not acceptable, surely?