I have recently returned from living overseas where I had my own buisness (Home based salon) now my husband and I have returned back to the UK.
I am setting up again at home but have a part time job whilst i build my buisness I have 10 years experience and would like to ask how much i should be earning the salon is offering £6.25 an hr with no commition and I feel it is not enough.

This is a good link with info on expected salaries for Beauty Therapists and other jobs too.

learndirect - beauty therapist

In this country, unless you work for yourself, beauty therapy is not a particularly well paid job. Of course there are exeptions i have been extremely lucky to find an amazing boss who pays very well. At my last job i was on £6.25 an hour with 20% product commission employed as a senior therapist. Maybe after you have worked there for a bit they will put your money up?

I am a full time nail artist at a full service salon, my salary is a joke and the company only thinks of themselves, but that is corprate for ya. The company i work for pays like this its an either or thing which is greater your weekly pay or commission and u get a percent of what your services are if you reach commision. In the past i have done commission only and straight hourly, this year i will be trying my hand at doing business at home. I hope this will be the way that will make me happy. Im just not corprate material....lol I am too embarrassed to mention what my anual income is so i wont

thanks for your help

Sorry,I can barely read this,can you change your font and colour please,dont know if it's my eyes or what but it's one big mish mash of pink and I wanted to read what you had written,thanks.xx

i must say i do feel beauty therapist job salaries are very poor indeed

i seen salons where a receptionist can earn more than the therapist

i have yet to find a position that pays more than £18k per year, which i think is pitiful especially where the hours are at least 40 per week

I earnt £5.90 per hour at spa i used to work at. Plus 10% commision. This was about 3 years ago & after reading below you'll see why i left to work in an office for less hours & a hell of a lot more money.

Two late nights per week until 9pm , hardly ever got a weekend off or two days together for that matter.
40 hr week with 30min lunch break.
Wasn't allowed to use pool or gym as manager didn't want us mixing with clients.
Not unusual to do FIVE full body massage at a weekend.
Expected to arrive 30mins before shift to set up (unpaid)
No overtime
And i was doing the senior therapists work for no extra pay !!

Much prefer working self employed now !

Mmmm,we can see why you left Juliette,fancy not letting you use the pool or gym on your day off,nobody would have recognised you out of uniform.Mind you it was a gorgeous place to work eh!!!!If nothing else.xx

As with all professional but not professional jobs, the pay is crap...my hubby is a chef...professional.....but with all his years of experience and education and time put in he is still making crap money.

Four years ago before I satrted nails I was in an office job earning £27k for going to work and doing what I had to even though I hated it...yes there was stress of the job...but if I never had my kids I would be still doing that job and who knows what my salary would have been by now.

£6.00 an hour seems to be the price for a nail tech round about here...it's rubbish isn't it...not much more than minimum wage!

i think the better you get yourself sorted doing buisiness at home the better, you are obviously very unhappy and believe me it's just not worth it.
I hope everything works out for you
xx

Hi Cathie,

I read your reply to this thread with great interest. You said you gave up a £27k a year job, and became a nail tech.

I am in the same position....I earn £26k per annum and have just told my employer that I am cutting my days down to 3 per week. A big drop in salary....and very scary!!

I'm about to start a mobile Beauty and Hairdressing business, part time, and hopefully progressing to full time quite soon.

Some people around me think i'm crazy to give up the job/ salary/ conditions....but i'm 30 this year and feel if I don't do this now I never will.

I'm just hoping it's all going to turn out okay.....any advice from you (and all geeks) would be much appreciated.

Tracy

I quit my job in an expensive beauty salon (treatments made on average £50 an hour and I made sales of around £150 a week) with a wage of £6 and hour, no commision therefore take home pay was £188 a week after tax that is £9,776 a year take home pay after tax (scandalous in my opinion).

I went to look for a new job after working in the salon for 2 years as a therapist (I actually can't believe I stayed there that long!). I too am embarresed about my wage but feel people should know how much some beauty therapists are actually paid. I had left a much better paid office job to retrain as a beauty therapist so was dishartened as the rewards were not as great as the effort I had to put in- late nights, saturdays, turning up early to open up, staying late to cash up, tiring physical work, sometimes running the salon on my own.

When I went to look for a new job I found that I could earn slightly more money but had to work more late nights and both saturday and sunday. I went for one job interview for a salon in F*rtnum and Mas*ns in London and they told me they paid their staff minimum wage and 10% commision on sales which they were happy with "happy with!!!!!!!!" this is a joke!! especially as the male hairdresser that interviewed me had no idea of the work I did.

I now work for myself mobile, the best decision I ever made. Some weeks when I started I had only one or two clients but as I was taking home all the money and set my prices relatively high I could still make £100 with this little clients. When I have a good week I have the potential to make upwards of £300 with only 6 or 7 clients. This would still be with only working for about 10 hours of the week. I have been mobile for 8 months and have gathered about 45 clients through word of mouth. I am hoping that things can only get better. In my opinion you can only make money in this buisiness if you work for yourself, either renting, in your own salon, mobile, or from home, unless you have a very fair boss!

It can be slow at first going out on your own and it can be expensive starting up but if you want it to work it will. When I told people what I was going to do some said it would not work but I knew in my heart that it would.

I own a salon and my GF works for me but obviously the profits are our wages.

When we employ we will be paying min wage, my GF worked for 3 years in a old salon as a employee on min wage with not even an inflation rise.
We won't be able to afford to do anything else.

Thing is, unless you work for yourself that sort of wage is industry standerd.
Same with factory work, I worked with ppl who had HND's and were still only on 10k a year.

With a salon, it's a desirable job... much like a air hostess.
For me, I am training to be a personal trainer to supplement our family income as well as the profits from the salon.
I will only be earning minimum wage or not far off as well, this is because soooo many people want this sort of work so supply and demand of employees available drives the wages people are willing to work for down.

I can understand the constraints on the amount you can pay in wages in a new salon however a good worker is worth their weight in gold. If you eventually pay an employee their worth you will see your business profit and you will be on the path to a very healthy client base happy employees=happy customers=returning, loyal customers.

I would not return to a salon where I felt the staff were being exploited and I feel earning the minimum wage and being asked to do up to 7 massages a day at £50 a pop is slave labour. I have visited a salon where the girl doing my massage said I was her 7th of the day and that she felt trapped in a contract at the salon- I could not relax and tipped her over the odds, but we should not have to rely on tips. Just because that is the "industry standard" it should not remain that way. I would guess silly hours and bad pay is one of the reasons that the turn over of staff in many salons is so high. How can therapists be asked to give so much physically and emotionally (a caring treatment) to the client if they are stressed about how to pay their bills or getting enough sleep before their next shift? This is why if I did ever work in a salon again I would look for one where the owner is a therapist as then they have some idea of the work a beauty therapist does!