Work in the uk or ireland for a foreigner?

Question

I live in Brazil and work here. My salary is R$ 1800/month – less than 1000 euros – of course life cost here is cheaper. Anyway, I really wanna try some experience abroad and I would like to know if I can find jobs over there in uk or Ireland, any kind of work. How much would I earn/month and would spend in rent? Note that I’ll not be illegal!!! Just student working. I know students work only 20h but if it’s not a company they let u work 40 hours.

Answer 1

It's not as good as you think it would be here. I earn around £1200 per month in a good job (after tax and other deductions - on average of 24% in total on an average wage). In a minimum wage job or a bar job full time you can expect to earn £600-£700 per month. Standard rent on a very small apartment in Manchester is £250+, in London will be £500+. Then you have utilities and local housing taxes to pay that will amount to about £150-£200 per month in total. This is all before you start buying your food and transport costs to get to work. So you won't be left with much spare money - and even when you do have spare money, compared with Brazil, almost everything you do has to be done indoors because it rains so much and in winter it can drop to -5 degrees centigrade - if you are acclimatised to Brazil and have not lived in that climate before you will not enjoy yourself much in winter!.

Don't get me wrong, Britain has a lot of good things going for it and a lot of great things and it is a pretty safe country, but if you are looking for a better standard of living you will need to earn a LOT of money - upwards of £40,000 per year. If you want to come here for the experience then it is worth while, but not if you want to do it just for the money!.

The other thing is that until you have been here for three years and have a residents permit or citizenship (which is difficult and expensive to get, the health and education systems are not free - they are VERY expensive. So think carefully if you want to come here as a student.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

My partner works in security earning £264 pw before tax and NI working 84 hours per week and rent and council tax is £130pw and food and travel and cigarettes are very expensive. there is jobs that foreign students do for half the minimum wage which is £5.52 per hour. This is our summer time just now and it is raining and about 17c

Answer 3

Hi, I am from the Netherlands, living in Ireland

It all depends what kind of work you are looking for.

I live near Gort in Ireland where there are many Brazillians, most of them work in construction. In the last year the construction has gone down here and many brazillians struggle, as they usually work on a day-to-day base. I do not know if they are here ilegally, but many of them are working for minimum wage or less (while their qualified colleagues make 50% more)

If I was you, I would not go for construction or bar work, as you will be replaced by the first guy that walks in and will do the same job for less (even below minimum wage)

You would probably be better off to use your language skill, provided that your English is good (doesnt need to be perfect) Try www.irishjobs.ie and filter on Portugese (or even Spanish?), there usually is enough work for large international companies who have their European callcentres in Ireland. These jobs are a lot more secure than construction and bar work - and give you oppurtunities to develop yourself.

In Ireland minimum wage is €8.60, after tax that is about €1350,- a month. rent and cost of living is high, most people share a house and pay about 200-400 a month for a room (depending on the house and the location etc.) In Dublin you easily pay 600 for a (nice) room. Food will cost you at least about €40 a week. And remember that cigarettes are €7,30 per pack!