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.

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.

An average of 79% of Bangladeshi households were in the 2 lowest income quintiles (after housing costs were deducted) between April 2019 and March 2022

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.

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.

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.

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

This statistic shows the distribution households by total weekly gross household income in the United Kingdom (UK) in the fiscal year 2017/18. In this year, 27 percent of the households had a total weekly gross income of 1,000 British pounds or more.

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.

In 2023, full-time workers in their 40s had the highest average annual salary in the United Kingdom, earning on average around 39,491 British pounds a year, compared with 20,437 for people aged between 18 and 21.

This dataset provides information about earnings of employees who are working in an area, who are on adult rates and whose pay for the survey pay-period was not affected by absence. Tables provided here include total hourly earnings (excluding overtime), with breakdowns by gender, and full-time/part-time status, with median, mean and earnings distribution for the London region. These are provided annually in nominal terms dating from 1997. The earnings information presented relates to pay before tax, National Insurance or other deductions. These National Statistics are produced to high professional standards and released according to the arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority. The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) provides information about the levels, distribution and make-up of earnings and hours worked for employees in all industries and occupations. ASHE is based on a 1% sample of employee jobs taken from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) Pay As You Earn (PAYE) records. Information on earnings and hours is obtained from employers and treated confidentially. ASHE does not cover the self-employed nor does it cover employees not paid during the reference period. Further information is available on the ONS website.

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.

Forecast: Electric Power Generation, Transmission and Distribution Wages and Salaries in the UK 2024 - 2028 Discover more data with ReportLinker!

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Derived Current and Annual Net Household Income dataset provides derived net income variables for the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). It is an unofficial supplement to the set of derived income variables in the official BHPS release (which focus on gross income rather than net income). The purpose of these additional files is to provide an analysis of income and poverty dynamics in Britain, and related topics.

The aim of the research was to produce a longitudinal complement to the cross-section income distribution information provided by the Department of Social Security's (DSS) Households Below Average Income (HBAI) reports, and to this end the HBAI definition of net income (DSS, 1993) has been closely adhered to. Also included in the data are BHPS versions of HBAI family type and economic status variables.

It is recommended that these data are used in conjunction with the main BHPS dataset, held at the UKDA under SN 5151.

The original deposit of this dataset was made in 1999, and contained data from BHPS waves 1-7. Subsequent editions were updated in conjunction with successive waves of BHPS. For the eighth edition (November 2008), new data for Waves 15 and 16 have been added to the study and data for Waves 1–14 and the documentation have been updated. For the ninth edition (April 2012), new data for Waves 17 and 18 have been added and the documentation has been updated accordingly.


Main Topics:

The dataset contains derived variables to accompany BHPS Waves 1-18. Three types of variable are available: estimates of current household net income and annual household net income, and some of their components, together with classifications of persons according to family type and economic status of their family.

This study contains the final dataset used in 'Distribution regression with sample selection and UK wage decomposition, by Victor Chernozhukov, Ivan Fernandez-Val and Siyi Luo.*

The data come from the UK Family Expenditure Survey (FES) for the years 1978 to 2001, Expenditure and Food Survey (EFS) for the years 2002 to 2007, and Living Costs and Food Survey (LCFS) for 2008-2013, supplemented with variables constructed with the tax and welfare-benefit model (TAXBEN) by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

*(See: Chernozhukov, V., Fernández-Val, I. and Luo, S. (2023) 'Distribution regression with sample selection and UK wage decomposition', CEMMAP working paper CWP09/23, Institute for Fiscal Studies/Department of Economics, UCL.)

The data are available to download in Stata format only, with an accompanying Stata .do file and supplementary documentation.