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.

In 2024, the average annual full-time earnings for the top ten percent of earners in the United Kingdom was 72,150 British pounds, compared with 22,763 for the bottom ten percent of earners. As of this year, the average annual earnings for all full-time employees was 37,430 pounds, up from 34,963 pounds in the previous year. Strong wage growth continues in 2025 As of February 2025, wages in the UK were growing by approximately 5.9 percent compared with the previous year, with this falling to 5.6 percent if bonus pay is included. When adjusted for inflation, regular pay without bonuses grew by 2.1 percent, with overall pay including bonus pay rising by 1.9 percent. While UK wages have now outpaced inflation for almost two years, there was a long period between 2021 and 2023 when high inflation in the UK was rising faster than wages, one of the leading reasons behind a severe cost of living crisis at the time. UK's gender pay gap falls in 2024 For several years, the difference between average hourly earnings for men and women has been falling, with the UK's gender pay gap dropping to 13.1 percent in 2024, down from 27.5 percent in 1997. When examined by specific industry sectors, however, the discrepancy between male and female earnings can be much starker. In the financial services sector, for example, the gender pay gap was almost 30 percent, with professional, scientific and technical professions also having a relatively high gender pay gap rate of 20 percent.

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.

Annual estimates of paid hours worked and earnings for UK employees by sex, and full-time and part-time, by region, and public and private sector, and non-profit bodies and mutual associations. Hourly and weekly estimates are provided for the pay period that included a specified date in April. They relate to employees on adult rates of pay, whose earnings for the survey pay period were not affected by absence. Estimates for 2020 and 2021 include employees who have been furloughed under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS). Annual estimates are provided for the tax year that ended on 5th April in the reference year. They relate to employees on adult rates of pay who have been in the same job for more than a year.

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.

Households in the bottom decile in the United Kingdom earned, on average, ****** British pounds per year in 2022/23, compared with the top decile which earned ******* pounds per year.

Data on the average annual gross salary percentiles in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2020, by gender, shows that while women's average annual gross pay for the tenth percentile was around 6.8 thousand British pounds in 2020, the male average was more than twice as high in the same percentile. The female percentile with the highest annual pay averaged at 45.3 thousand British pounds, but was exceeded by the male average by 65 thousand in 2020.

New Earnings Survey (NES) and Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) percentile and median time series by full-time employees, full-time males and full-time females.

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

Distribution of gross hourly earnings of full-time and part-time employees by sex, UK, quarterly, not seasonally adjusted. Labour Force Survey. These are official statistics in development.

Annual estimates of paid hours worked and earnings for UK employees by sex, and full-time and part-time, by age group.

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.

Key information about UK Household Income per Capita

• United Kingdom Annual Household Income per Capita reached 34,805.008 USD in Dec 2023, compared with the previous value of 36,168.598 USD in Dec 2022.
• UK Annual Household Income per Capita data is updated yearly, available from Dec 1996 to Dec 2023, with an averaged value of 38,694.697 USD.
• The data reached an all-time high of 56,270.561 USD in Dec 2007 and a record low of 27,377.030 USD in Dec 1996.
• In the latest reports, Retail Sales of UK dropped 2.090 % YoY in May 2023.

CEIC calculates Annual Household Income per Capita from annual Average Household Income and Average Household Size and converts it into USD. Office for National Statistics provides Household Income in local currency and Average Household Size. Federal Reserve Board average market exchange rate is used for currency conversions.

Average UK household incomes taxes and benefits by household type, tenure status, household characteristics and long-term trends in income inequality.

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.

Pensioners' Incomes (PI) contains estimates of the levels, sources and distribution of pensioners' incomes. It also examines the position of single pensioners and pensioner couples, including any dependent children, within the income distribution of the population as a whole. This differs from Households Below Average Income (HBAI) (see SNs 5828 and 7196), where analysis is on a household basis, and includes the income of adults not in the pensioner unit but living in the same household. The PI undertakes a few extra steps beyond the FRS and HBAI data to derive pension income variables.

The PI series is a key source of information used to inform Government thinking on relevant policies and related programmes and projects. Researchers and analysts outside the government use statistics and data to examine topics such as ageing, the distributional impacts of fiscal policies, and pensioner groups' income profiles. The PI estimates are usually based on a sample of around 7,000 adults over State Pension age, who reside in private households in the United Kingdom, taken from the Family Resources Survey (FRS).

The gov.uk Pensioners' Incomes Statistics webpage contains annual reports, accompanying tables, research, and technical papers.

PI data are also available from 1994/95 onwards via the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Stat-Xplore online tool.

Secure Access PI data

The Secure Access version of the PI series (SN 9257) is available from 2007/08 onwards, whereas the standard End User Licence (EUL) data (SN 8503) are available from 2008/09. Unlike the EUL versions, the ages of the head of household and spouse have not been top-coded at 80 years in the Secure Access version. Prospective users of the Secure Access version must fulfil additional requirements beyond those associated with the EUL datasets. The Secure Access version of FRS is held under SN 9256, and the Secure Access version of HBAI is available under SN 7196.

Latest edition information

For the 7th edition (April 2025), data and documentation for 2023/24 were added to the study.

This article studies the median income of UK households from 1977 to 2011/12.

Source agency: Office for National Statistics

Designation: National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: Median Household Income