The median annual earnings in the United Kingdom was 37,430 British pounds per year in 2024. Annual earnings varied significantly by region, ranging from 47,455 pounds in London to 32,960 pounds in the North East. Along with London, two other areas of the UK had median annual earnings above the UK average; South East England, and Scotland, at 39,038 pounds and 38,315 pounds respectively. Regional Inequality in the UK Various other indicators highlight the degree of regional inequality in the UK, especially between London and the rest of the country. Productivity in London, as measured by output per hour, was 26.2 percent higher than the UK average. By comparison, every other UK region, except the South East, fell below the UK average for productivity. In gross domestic product per head, London was also an outlier. The average GDP per head in the UK was just over 37,000 pounds in 2023, but for London it was almost 64,000 pounds. Again, the South East's GDP per head was slightly above the UK average, with every other region below it. Within London itself, there is also a great degree of inequality. In 2023, for example, the average earnings in Kensington and Chelsea were 964 pounds per week, compared with 675 pounds in Barking and Dagenham. Wages continue to grow in 2025 In March 2025, weekly wages in the UK were growing by around 5.6 percent, or 1.8 percent when adjusted for inflation. For almost two years, wages have grown faster than inflation after a long period where prices were rising faster than wages between 2021 and 2023. This was due to a sustained period of high inflation in the UK, which peaked in October 2022 at 11.1 percent. Although inflation started to slow the following month, it wasn't until June 2023 that wages started to outpace inflation. By this point, the damage caused by high energy and food inflation had led to the the worst Cost of Living Crisis in the UK for a generation.

Every year between 2013 and 2021, employees from the combined Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic group had the lowest average hourly pay out of all ethnic groups.

In the 3 years to March 2021, black households were most likely out of all ethnic groups to have a weekly income of under £600.

In March 2025, the top one percent of earners in the United Kingdom received an average pay of over 16,000 British pounds per month, compared with the bottom ten percent of earners who earned around 800 pounds a month.

Annual estimates of paid hours worked and earnings for UK employees by sex, and full-time and part-time, by home-based region to local and unitary authority level.

Between April 2008 and March 2024, households from the Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic groups were the most likely to live in low income out of all ethnic groups, before and after housing costs.

Estimates of annual household income for the four income types for Middle layer Super Output Areas, or local areas, in England and Wales.

Gross weekly earnings of full-time employees by region, UK, quarterly, not seasonally adjusted. Labour Force Survey. These are official statistics in development.

Affordability ratios calculated by dividing house prices by gross annual residence-based earnings. Based on the median and lower quartiles of both house prices and earnings in England and Wales.

Update 29-04-2020: The data is now split into two files based on the variable collection frequency (monthly and yearly). Additional variables added: area size in hectares, number of jobs in the area, number of people living in the area.

Context

I have been inspired by Xavier and his work on Barcelona to explore the city of London! 🇬🇧 💂

Content

The datasets is primarily centered around the housing market of London. However, it contains a lot of additional relevant data: - Monthly average house prices - Yearly number of houses - Yearly number of houses sold - Yearly percentage of households that recycle - Yearly life satisfaction - Yearly median salary of the residents of the area - Yearly mean salary of the residents of the area - Monthly number of crimes committed - Yearly number of jobs - Yearly number of people living in the area - Area size in hectares

The data is split by areas of London called boroughs (a flag exists to identify these), but some of the variables have other geographical UK regions for reference (like England, North East, etc.). There have been no changes made to the data except for melting it into a long format from the original tables.

Acknowledgements

The data has been extracted from London Datastore. It is released under UK Open Government License v2 and v3. The underlining datasets can be found here: https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/uk-house-price-index https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/number-and-density-of-dwellings-by-borough https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/subjective-personal-well-being-borough https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/household-waste-recycling-rates-borough https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/earnings-place-residence-borough https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/recorded_crime_summary https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/jobs-and-job-density-borough https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/ons-mid-year-population-estimates-custom-age-tables

Cover photo by Frans Ruiter from Unsplash

Inspiration

The dataset lends itself for extensive exploratory data analysis. It could also be a great supervised learning regression problem to predict house price changes of different boroughs over time.

75% of households from the Bangladeshi ethnic group were in the 2 lowest income quintiles (after housing costs were deducted) between April 2021 and March 2024.

In April 2025, employees in the United Kingdom were earning a median pay of ***** British pounds per month, compared with ***** in the previous month.

39.8% of workers from the Indian ethnic group were in 'professional' jobs in 2021 – the highest percentage out of all ethnic groups in this role.

Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) estimates of paid hours worked and earnings for UK employees by sex, and full time and part time, by region and age group.

Affordability ratios calculated by dividing house prices by gross annual workplace-based earnings. Based on the median and lower quartiles of both house prices and earnings in England and Wales.

In the three months to April 2025, average weekly earnings in the United Kingdom grew by 5.2 percent, while pay including bonuses grew by 5.3 percent, when compared with the same period leading to April 2024. In the same month, the inflation rate for the Consumer Price Index was 3.5 percent, indicating that wages were rising faster than prices that month. Average salaries in the UK In 2024, the average salary for full-time workers in the UK was 37,430 British pounds a year, up from 34,963 in the previous year. In London, the average annual salary was far higher than the rest of the country, at 47,455 pounds per year, compared with just 32,960 in North East England. There also still exists a noticeable gender pay gap in the UK, which was seven percent for full-time workers in 2024, down from 7.5 percent in 2023. Lastly, the monthly earnings of the top one percent in the UK was 15,887 pounds as of November 2024, far higher than even that of the average for the top five percent, who earned 7,641 pounds per month, while pay for the lowest 10 percent of earners was just 805 pounds per month. Waves of industrial action in the UK One of the main consequences of high inflation and low wage growth throughout 2022 and 2023 was an increase in industrial action in the UK. In December 2022, for example, there were approximately 830,000 working days lost due to labor disputes. Throughout this month, workers across various industry sectors were involved in industrial disputes, such as nurses, train drivers, and driving instructors. Many of the workers who took part in strikes were part of the UK's public sector, which saw far weaker wage growth than that of the private sector throughout 2022. Widespread industrial action continued into 2023, with approximately 303,000 workers involved in industrial disputes in March 2023. There was far less industrial action by 2024, however, due to settlements in many of the disputes, although some are ongoing as of 2025.

United Kingdom GHP: Mean: London: Sales Occupations data was reported at 10.560 GBP in 2017. This records an increase from the previous number of 9.880 GBP for 2016. United Kingdom GHP: Mean: London: Sales Occupations data is updated yearly, averaging 9.520 GBP from Dec 2011 (Median) to 2017, with 7 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 10.560 GBP in 2017 and a record low of 9.180 GBP in 2012. United Kingdom GHP: Mean: London: Sales Occupations data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Office for National Statistics. The data is categorized under Global Database’s UK – Table UK.G049: Gross Hourly Pay: Mean: by Region.

United Kingdom GHP: Mean: London: Elementary Trades & Related Occupations data was reported at 9.930 GBP in 2017. This records an increase from the previous number of 9.330 GBP for 2016. United Kingdom GHP: Mean: London: Elementary Trades & Related Occupations data is updated yearly, averaging 9.330 GBP from Dec 2011 (Median) to 2017, with 7 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 9.930 GBP in 2017 and a record low of 9.070 GBP in 2012. United Kingdom GHP: Mean: London: Elementary Trades & Related Occupations data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Office for National Statistics. The data is categorized under Global Database’s UK – Table UK.G049: Gross Hourly Pay: Mean: by Region.