The median annual earnings for full-time employees in the United Kingdom was approximately 37,430 British pounds in 2024, compared with 34,963 pounds in the previous year. At the start of the provided time period, in 1999, the average full-time salary in the UK was 17,803 pounds per year, with median earnings exceeding 20,000 pounds per year in 2002, and 30,000 by 2019. Wages continue to grow faster than inflation in 2025 Between November 2021 and July 2023 inflation was higher than wage growth in the UK, with wages still outpacing inflation as of March 2025. At the peak of the recent wave of high inflation in October 2022, the CPI inflation rate reached a 41-year-high of 11.1 percent, wages were growing much slower at 6.1 percent. Since that peak, inflation remained persistently high for several months, only dropping below double figures in April 2023, when inflation was 8.7 percent, down from 10.1 percent in the previous month. For 2023 as a whole, the average annual rate of inflation was 7.3 percent but fell to 2.5 percent in 2024, but is forecast to increase to 3.2 percent in 2025. Highest and lowest-paid occupations As of 2023, the highest-paid occupation in the UK was that of Chief Executives and Senior Officials, who had an average weekly pay of approximately, 1,576 pounds. By contrast, the lowest-paid occupation that year was that of retail cashiers, and check-out operators, who earned approximately 383 pounds a week. For industry sectors as a whole, people who worked full-time in the electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply sector had the highest average earnings, at 955 pounds a week, compared with 505 pounds a week in the accommodation and food services sector, the lowest average earnings in 2023.

Information on farm household income and farm household composition. Source agency: Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Designation: National Statistics Language: English Alternative title: Farm Household Income and Household Composition, England

If you require the datasets in a more accessible format, please contact fbs.queries@defra.gsi.gov.uk

Background and guidance on the statistics

Information on farm household income and farm household composition was collected in the Farm Business Survey (FBS) for England for the first time in 2004/05. Collection of household income data is restricted to the household of the principal farmer from each farm business. For practical reasons, data is not collected for the households of any other farmers and partners. Two-thirds of farm businesses have an input only from the principal farmer’s household (see table 5). However, details of household composition are collected for the households of all farmers and partners in the business, but not employed farm workers.

Data on the income of farm households is used in conjunction with other economic information for the agricultural sector (e.g. farm business income) to help inform policy decisions and to help monitor and evaluate current policies relating to agriculture in the United Kingdom by Government. It also informs wider research into the economic performance of the agricultural industry.

This release gives the main results from the income and composition of farm households and the off-farm activities of the farmer and their spouse (Including common law partners) sections of the FBS. These sections include information on the household income of the principal farmer’s household, off-farm income sources for the farmer and spouse and incomes of other members of their household and the number of working age and pensionable adults and children in each of the households on the farm (the information on household composition can be found in Appendix B).

This release provides the main results from the 2013/14 FBS. The results are presented together with confidence intervals.

Survey content and methodology

The Farm Business Survey (FBS) is an annual survey providing information on the financial position and physical and economic performance of farm businesses in England. The sample of around 1,900 farm businesses covers all regions of England and all types of farming with the data being collected by face to face interview with the farmer. Results are weighted to represent the whole population of farm businesses that have at least 25 thousand Euros of standard output as recorded in the annual June Survey of Agriculture and Horticulture. In 2013 there were just over 58 thousand farm businesses meeting this criteria.

Since 2009/10 a sub-sample of around 1,000 farms in the FBS has taken part in both the additional surveys on the income and composition of farm households and the off-farm activities of the farmer and their spouse. In previous years, the sub-sample had included over 1,600 farms. As such, caution should be taken when comparing to earlier years.

The farms that responded to the additional survey on household incomes and off-farm activities of the farmer and spouse had similar characteristics to those farms in the main FBS in terms of farm type and geographical location. However, there is a smaller proportion of very large farms in the additional survey than in the main FBS. Full details of the characteristic of responding farms can be found at Appendix A of the notice.

For further information about the Farm Business Survey please see: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-environment-food-rural-affairs/series/farm-business-survey

Data analysis

The results from the FBS relate to farms which have a standard output of at least 25,000 Euros. Initial weights are applied to the FBS records based on the inverse sampling fraction for each design stratum (farm type by farm size). These weights are then adjusted (calibration weighting) so that they can produce unbiased estimators of a number of different target variables. Completion of the additional survey on household incomes and off-farm activities of the farmer and spouse was voluntary and a sample of around 1,000 farms was achieved. In order to take account of non-response, the results have been reweighted using a method that preserves marginal totals for populations according to farm type and farm size groups. As such, farm population totals for other classifications (e.g. regions) will not be in-line with results using the main FBS weights, nor will any results produced for variables derived from the rest of the FBS (e.g. farm business income).

Accuracy and reliability of the results

We show 95% confidence intervals against the results. These show the range of values that may apply to the figures. They mean that we are 95% confident that this range contains the true value. They are calculated as the standard errors (se) multiplied by 1.96 to give the 95% confidence interval. The standard errors only give an indication of the sampling error. They do not reflect any other sources of survey errors, such as non-response bias. For the Farm Business Survey, the confidence limits shown are appropriate for comparing groups within the same year only; they should not be used for comparing with previous years since they do not allow for the fact that many of the same farms will have contributed to the Farm Business Survey in both years.

Availability of results

This release contains headline results for each section. The full set of results can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-environment-food-rural-affairs/series/farm-business-survey#publications

Defra statistical notices can be viewed on the on the statistics pages of the Defra website at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-environment-food-rural-affairs/about/statistics. This site also shows details of future publications, with pre-announced dates.

Data Uses

Data from the Farm Business Survey (FBS) are provided to the EU as part of the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN). The data have been used to help inform policy decisions (e.g. Reform of Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 of Common Agricultural Policy) and to help monitor and evaluate current policies relating to agriculture in England (and the EU). It is also widely used by the industry for benchmarking and informs wider research into the economic performance of the agricultural industry.

User engagement

As part of our ongoing commitment to compliance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics http://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/assessment/code-of-practice/index.html, we wish to strengthen our engagement with users of these statistics and better understand the use made of them and the types of decisions that they inform. Consequently, we invite users to make themselves known, to advise us of the use they do, or might, make of these statistics, and what their wishes are in terms of engagement. Feedback on this notice and enquiries about these statistics are also welcome.

Definitions

Household income of the principal farmer Principal farmer’s household income has the following components: (1) The share of farm business income (FBI) (including income from farm diversification) attributable to the principal farmer and their spouse. (2) Principal farmer’s and spouse’s off farm income from employment and self-employment, investment income, pensions and social payments. (3) Income of other household members. The share of farm business income and all employment and self-employment incomes, investment income and pension income are recorded as gross of income tax payments and National Insurance contributions, but after pension contributions. In addition, no deduction is made for council tax.

Household A household is defined as a single person or group of people living at the same address as their only or main residence, who either share one meal a day together or share the living accommodation. A household must contain at least one person who received drawings from the farm business or who took a share of the profit from the business.

Drawings Drawings represent the monies which the farmer takes from the business for their own personal use. The percentage of total drawings going to each household is collected and is used to calculate the total share of farm business income for the principal farmer’s household.

Mean Mean household income of individuals is the ”average”, found by adding up the weighted household incomes for each individual farm in the population for analysis and dividing the result by the corresponding weighted number of farms. In this report average is usually taken to refer to the mean.

Percentiles These are the values which divide the population for analysis, when ranked by an output variable (e.g. household income or net worth), into 100 equal-sized groups. E.g. twenty five per cent of the population would have incomes below the 25th percentile.

Median Median household income divides the population, when ranked by an output variable, into two equal sized groups. The median of the whole population is the same as the 50th percentile. The term is also used for the midpoint of the subsets of the income distribution

Quartiles Quartiles are values which divide the population, when ranked by an output variable, into four equal-sized groups. The lowest quartile is the same as the 25th percentile. The divisions of a population split by quartiles are referred to as quarters in this publication.

Quintiles Quintiles are values which divide the population, when ranked by an output variable, into five equal-sized groups. The divisions of a population split by quintiles are referred to as fifths in this publication.

Assets Assets include

As of 2023, the average annual wage of Germany was 48,301 euros per year, a growth of almost 6,000 Euros when compared with 2000. From 2000 until 2007, wages rose by less than a thousand euros, with wage growth accelerating mainly in the period after 2010. Comparisons with rest of the EU Within the European Union Luxembourg had an average annual salary of almost 80 thousand Euros, with Germany having an annual salary comparable to other large European Countries, such as the United Kingdom and France. In neighboring Poland, the average annual salary was just over 39 thousand U.S dollars, meaning that German’s earned, on average, 20 percent more than what their Polish counterparts did. German economy slowing in 2023 While Germany initially had one of the strongest recoveries from the 2008 financial crash and as of 2020 had the largest economy in Europe its economy has started to slow in recent years. For 2023 the German economy is contracted by 0.26 percent, and while 2024 marked a slight improvement, the expectations are that 2025 remains a year of slow growth.