According to a recent study by the Royal Society of Arts, 70% of the workforce in Britain is ‘chronically broke’.
The study found that only 30% of the surveyed employees were living a comfortable life.
The rest were struggling to manage their finances. It’s no wonder that more and more of the salaried class in the UK today is turning to short-term financing option such as payday loans.
What the RSA Report Reveals
Based on their responses, the RSA report categorized the surveyed employees into seven different classes: the chronically precarious, the acutely precarious, the flexi-workers, the steady-starters, the idealists, the strivers, and the high-flyers.
The chronically precarious were those who had savings of less than £1,000 and a very low pay. These were the people who felt no satisfaction in their job. The acutely precarious were people with a low pay, but often their pay would fluctuate, which wasn’t the case with the chronically precarious class. The flexi-workers were those earning less than £21,000 a year, but had high levels of savings. These people valued autonomy over security.
The steady-starters had a reasonable pay, but they do not believe in savings. They rely on their income to finance needs and they are likely to be a risky position if they lost their job. The idealists mid-earning, passionate and often millennials. Typically, they have savings of more than £10,000. The strivers and high-flyers have high income and high savings, with their savings often exceeding £10,000.
From these numbers, it is obvious that the employees most likely to get short-term financing are those categorized as the chronically precarious, the acutely precarious, the flexi-workers, or the steady-starters.
Retail Employees Seeking Short-Term Financing
According to the Telegraph, NHS staffis more reliant on payday loans than any other organization’s workers. However, they are not the only ones seeking short-term finance. According to data available on Cashlady.com, many in the retail sector of Britain including those working for retailers such as TESCO, Amazon, SAINSBURYS, Coop, BONBONS,and Morrisons are the biggest beneficiaries of High Cost Short Term Credit solutions.
For example, in London, employees of TESCO and SAINSBURYS get short-term financing for an unexpected expense or to pay bills. In Meridian, employees of the same companies get short-term loans to pay bills or meet other expenses. In the west of the country, employees of TESCO and COOP are among the biggest beneficiaries of short-term financing options while employees of BONBONS are the top subscribers of short-term loans.
So, what does this all tell us? It tells us that people working in the retail sector in Britain are not making enough money or as much as they would want to make. To fulfill their needs, more and more of the retail workforce in the UK is turning to payday loans available online. Repayments from people’s salaries to online lenders in recent months have amounted to millions of dollars, which goes onto show how popular short-term financing options such as payday loans are among the salaried class, which includes employees of retail companies.
