In September 2025, the top one percent of earners in the United Kingdom received an average pay of 16,212 British pounds per month, compared with the bottom ten percent of earners who earned around 855 pounds a month.

In 2025, the average annual full-time earnings for the top ten percent of earners in the United Kingdom was more than 76,900 British pounds, compared with 23,990 for the bottom ten percent of earners. As of this year, the average annual earnings for all full-time employees was over 39,000 pounds, up from 37,400 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.

Households in the bottom decile in the United Kingdom earned, on average, ****** British pounds per year in 2023/24, compared with the top decile which earned around ******* pounds per year.

In 2024 men aged between 50 and 59 were the highest full-time earners in the United Kingdom among different gender and age groups, with men of different ages consistently earning more than women.

In 2022/23 approximately *****million taxpayers in the United Kingdom earned between 20,000 and 29,999 British pounds in this tax year, the most of any income level, while approximately *******taxpayers in the UK earned over one million pounds.

Ratio of household equivalised income of the top 10 per cent of households to the income of the bottom 10 per cent of households. Ratio calculated using weekly household income adjusted to take account of differences in numbers and ages of residents. This dataset is one of the Greater London Authority's measures of Economic Fairness. Click here to find out more. This dataset is one of the Greater London Authority's measures of Economic Development strategy. Click here to find out more.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the wealthiest one percent of people in the United Kingdom controlled 71 percent of net personal wealth, while the top ten percent controlled 93 percent. The share of wealth controlled by the rich in the United Kingdom fell throughout the twentieth century, and by 1990 the richest one percent controlled 16 percent of wealth, and the richest ten percent just over half of it.

This is the proportion of children aged under 16 (0-15) living in families in absolute low income during the year. The figures are based on the count of children aged under 16 (0-15) living in the area derived from ONS mid-year population estimates. The count of children refers to the age of the child at 30 June of each year.

Low income is a family whose equivalised income is below 60 per cent of median household incomes. Gross income measure is Before Housing Costs (BHC) and includes contributions from earnings, state support, and pensions. Equivalisation adjusts incomes for household size and composition, taking an adult couple with no children as the reference point. For example, the process of equivalisation would adjust the income of a single person upwards, so their income can be compared directly to the standard of living for a couple.

Absolute low income is income Before Housing Costs (BHC) in the reference year in comparison with incomes in 2010/11 adjusted for inflation. A family must have claimed one or more of Universal Credit, Tax Credits, or Housing Benefit at any point in the year to be classed as low income in these statistics. Children are dependent individuals aged under 16; or aged 16 to 19 in full-time non-advanced education. The count of children refers to the age of the child at 31 March of each year.

Data are calibrated to the Households Below Average Income (HBAI) survey regional estimates of children in low income but provide more granular local area information not available from the HBAI. For further information and methodology on the construction of these statistics, visit this link. Totals may not sum due to rounding.

Data is Powered by LG Inform Plus and automatically checked for new data on the 3rd of each month.

Households in the Indian and White Other ethnic groups received the highest percentage of their income from employment out of all ethnic groups.

This table shows the average House Price/Earnings ratio, which is an important indicator of housing affordability. Ratios are calculated by dividing house price by the median earnings of a borough. The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) is based on a 1 per cent sample of employee jobs. Information on earnings and hours is obtained in confidence from employers. It does not cover the self-employed nor does it cover employees not paid during the reference period. Information is as at April each year. The statistics used are workplace based full-time individual earnings. Pre-2013 Land Registry housing data are for the first half of the year only, so that they are comparable to the ASHE data which are as at April. This is no longer the case from 2013 onwards as this data uses house price data from the ONS House Price Statistics for Small Areas statistical release. Prior to 2006 data are not available for Inner and Outer London. The lowest 25 per cent of prices are below the lower quartile; the highest 75 per cent are above the lower quartile. The "lower quartile" property price/income is determined by ranking all property prices/incomes in ascending order. The 'median' property price/income is determined by ranking all property prices/incomes in ascending order. The point at which one half of the values are above and one half are below is the median. Regional data has not been published by DCLG since 2012. Data for regions has been calculated by the GLA. Data since 2014 has been calculated by the GLA using Land Registry house prices and ONS Earnings data. Link to DCLG Live Tables An interactive map showing the affordability ratios by local authority for 2013, 2014 and 2015 is also available.

In 2023/24, the top twenty percent of earners in the United Kingdom had an average household disposable income of over******* British pounds, compared with ****** for the bottom twenty percent.

FOCUSONLONDON2010:INCOMEANDSPENDINGATHOME

Household income in London far exceeds that of any other region in the UK. At £900 per week, London’s gross weekly household income is 15 per cent higher than the next highest region. Despite this, the costs to each household are also higher in the capital. Londoners pay a greater amount of their income in tax and national insurance than the UK average as well as footing a higher bill for housing and everyday necessities. All of which leaves London households less well off than the headline figures suggest.

This chapter, authored by Richard Walker in the GLA Intelligence Unit, begins with an analysis of income at both individual and household level, before discussing the distribution and sources of income. This is followed by a look at wealth and borrowing and finally, focuses on expenditure including an insight to the cost of housing in London, compared with other regions in the UK.

See other reports from this Focus on London series.

PRESENTATION:

This interactive presentation finds the answer to the question, who really is better off, an average London or UK household? This analysis takes into account available data from all types of income and expenditure. Click on the link to access.

PREZI

FACTS:

Some interesting facts from the data…

• Five boroughs with the highest median gross weekly pay per person in 2009:
• 1. Kensington & Chelsea - £809
• 2. City of London - £767
• 3. Westminster - £675
• 4. Wandsworth - £636
• 5. Richmond - £623
• ...
• 32. Brent - £439
• 33. Newham - £422
• Five boroughs with the highest median weekly rent for a 2 bedroom property in October 2010:
• 1. Kensington & Chelsea - £550
• 2. Westminster - £500
• 3. City of London - £450
• 4. Camden - £375
• 5. Islington - £360
• ...
• 32. Havering - £183
• 33. Bexley - £173
• Five boroughs with the highest percentage of households that own their home outright in 2009:
• 1. Bexley – 38 per cent
• 2. Havering – 36 per cent
• 3. Richmond – 32 per cent
• 4. Bromley – 31 per cent
• 5. Barnet – 28 per cent
• ...
• 31. Tower Hamlets – 9 per cent
• 32. Southwark – 9 per cent

The median annual earnings for full-time employees in the United Kingdom was just over 39,000 British pounds in 2025, compared with 37,400 pounds in the previous year. At the start of the provided time period, in 1999, the average full-time salary in the UK was 17,800 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.

The New Earnings Survey (NES) is an annual survey of the earnings of employees in Great Britain. Its primary purpose is to obtain information about the levels, distribution and make-up of earnings, and for the collective agreements that cover them.

The NES is designed to represent all categories of employees in businesses of all kinds and sizes. It provides a large amount of information on earnings and hours (including bonuses, overtime, etc) as well as industry information derived from the Inter-Departmental Business Register. It provides no information on personal characteristics of the employee apart from age and gender. Most variables are collected each year, although a few additional questions asked each year may or may not be asked in other years. The earnings, hours of work and other information relate to a specified week in April of each year.

The NES sampling frame is mainly supplied by Inland Revenue records. It is based largely on a one per cent sample of employees who are members of Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) income tax schemes. The PAYE sample is supplemented by data provided by large employers, using extracts from their payroll systems. A survey form is sent to employers, and completion is compulsory under the Statistics of Trade Act 1947. Some large businesses make automatic submissions direct from their electronic records.

Certain categories of employees are not selected: for example the Armed Forces, those employed in Enterprise Zones, private domestic service workers, occupational pensioners, non-salaried directors, those employed oversees, those working for their spouses, and clergymen holding pastoral appointments.

The NES was replaced by the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (UK Data Archive SN 6689) in 2004.

Further information on the NES can be found on the Office for National Statistics' (ONS) New Earnings Survey web page.

There are a number of issues and inconsistencies associated with the NES data. Users are advised to read the documentation carefully before using the dataset. For example, ONS advise for safety reasons that only data from 1998 onwards should be used because 1998 was the first year that annual earnings were validated properly and published.

Geographical references: postcodes
The postcodes available in these data from 1996 are pseudo-anonymised postcodes. The real postcodes are not available due to the potential risk of identification of the observations. However, these replacement postcodes retain the inherent nested characteristics of real postcodes, and will allow researchers to aggregate observations to other geographic units, e.g. wards, super output areas, etc. In the dataset, the variable of the replacement postcode is 'new_PC'.

Wages in the United Kingdom increased 4.80 percent in September of 2025 over the same month in the previous year. This dataset provides the latest reported value for - United Kingdom Average Weekly Earnings Growth - plus previous releases, historical high and low, short-term forecast and long-term prediction, economic calendar, survey consensus and news.

In 2023/24, households in the top decile in the United Kingdom paid, on average, 48,189 British pounds in income tax, compared with the lowest income decile which paid around 1,783 pounds per year.

The median annual earnings in the United Kingdom was 39,039 British pounds per year in 2025. Annual earnings varied significantly by region, ranging from 49,692 pounds in London to 34,403 pounds in the North East. Along with London, only South East England and Scotland had earnings above the UK average, at 39,983 pounds and 39,719 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.

Proportion of people claiming Universal Credit who are in employment. This is based on the count of the number of people on Universal Credit on the second Thursday of each month (completed the Universal Credit claim process and accepted their Claimant Commitment) and have not had a closure of their claim recorded for this spell. A closure of their claim would be recorded either at the request of the individual or if their entitlement to Universal Credit ends, for example, if they no longer satisfy the financial conditions to receive Universal Credit as they have capital over the threshold. To allow sufficient time for earnings information to be gathered on all claimants, figures for the latest month in the series will not be available until the next release. Figures provided for starts show the Jobcentre Plus office recorded at the start of the claim, whereas the figures for the number of people on Universal Credit are representative of the current Jobcentre Plus office that the claimant is attending. It is possible for people to have started on Universal Credit in one office and have moved to another office during their claim, and for this reason, the number of people on Universal Credit can be higher than the starts figure for any particular office, however it is more noticeable when numbers are low. You may be eligible to get Universal Credit if you’re on a low income or out of work, 18 or over (there are some exceptions if you’re 16 to 17), you’re under State Pension age (or your partner is), you and your partner have £16,000 or less in savings between you, and you live in the UK. Universal Credit has replaced Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) for most people. It is still possible to claim JSA if you are 18 or over and under State Pension age. As long as you are actively looking for a full-time job and are out of work, or are working less than 16 hours a week. These standalone JSA claims are separately reported. Statistical disclosure control has been applied with Stat-Xplore, which guards against the identification of an individual claimant.Data is Powered by LG Inform Plus and automatically checked for new data on the 3rd of each month.