In April 2025, employees in the United Kingdom were earning a median pay of 2,521 British pounds per month, compared with 2,494 in the previous month.
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.
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.
The table only covers individuals who have some liability to Income Tax. The percentile points have been independently calculated on total income before tax and total income after tax.
These statistics are classified as accredited official statistics.
You can find more information about these statistics and collated tables for the latest and previous tax years on the Statistics about personal incomes page.
Supporting documentation on the methodology used to produce these statistics is available in the release for each tax year.
Note: comparisons over time may be affected by changes in methodology. Notably, there was a revision to the grossing factors in the 2018 to 2019 publication, which is discussed in the commentary and supporting documentation for that tax year. Further details, including a summary of significant methodological changes over time, data suitability and coverage, are included in the Background Quality Report.
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Key information about United Kingdom Monthly Earnings
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.
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Earnings and employment statistics from Pay As You Earn (PAYE) Real Time Information (RTI), UK, NUTS 1, 2 and 3 areas and local authorities, monthly, non-seasonally adjusted. These are official statistics in development.
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Average weekly earnings at sector level headline estimates, Great Britain, monthly, seasonally adjusted. Monthly Wages and Salaries Survey.
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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 2024, the average annual full-time salary for men in the United Kingdom was 40,035 British pounds, compared with 34,000 pounds for women, a difference of just over 6,000 pounds. In the previous year, men earned an average annual salary of 37,382, compared with women who earned 31,672.
The average weekly earnings for full-time workers in the United Kingdom was around 728.3 British pounds a week in 2024, an increase on the previous year, when it was 681.7 pounds a week.
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These figures show the median gross annual pay for full-time workers on a workplace basis for the area, who are on adults rates of pay, and whose pay was not affected by absence. Figures are for GB pounds per annum. Full-time workers are defined as those who work more than 30 paid hours per week or those in teaching professions working 25 paid hours or more per week. Figures for earnings come from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) which is based on a 1 per cent sample of employees, information on whose earnings and hours is obtained from employers. The survey does not cover people who are self-employed, nor does it cover employees not paid during the reference period. Information relates to a pay period in April. The earnings information collected relates to gross pay before tax, national insurance or other deductions, and excludes payments in kind (i.e. payment made in the form of goods and services rather than cash). It is restricted to earnings relating to the survey pay period and so excludes payments of arrears from another period made during the survey period; any payments due as a result of a pay settlement but not yet paid at the time of the survey will also be excluded. Estimates for 2011 and subsequent years use a weighting scheme based on occupations which have been coded according to Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) 2010 that replaced SOC 2000. Therefore care should be taken when making comparisons with earlier years. Where the estimate is assessed with a coefficient of variation (CV) of over 20 per cent, these figures have been suppressed, as they are considered by the ONS as unreliable.Data is Powered by LG Inform Plus and automatically checked for new data on the 3rd of each month.
The median hourly earnings for full-time employees in the United Kingdom was 18.72 British pounds in 2024, compared with 17.48 pounds in the previous year. At the start of this provided time period, in 1997, the average hourly wage in the UK was 7.92 pounds per hour, rising to more than ten pounds per hour by 2003, and above 15 pounds per hour by 2020. Minimum and living wage in the UK In the United Kingdom, employers are expected to pay their employees a minimum wage that is determined by how old they are. Under 18s for example, had a minimum wage of 5.28 British pounds in 2023, with the figure increasing to 7.49 pounds those aged 18 to 20, 10.18 for 21 to 22 year old's, and 10.42 for those aged 23 and over. There is also a voluntarily paid living Wage that employers can choose to pay their workers. For the 2023/24 financial year this was twelve pounds an hour, rising to 13.15 pounds an hour for workers based in London. Icelandic the highest earners in Europe Iceland had the highest average annual wage in the Europe in 2022 at around 79,500 U.S dollars. This was followed by Luxembourg at 78,300 dollars, Switzerland at 72,990 and Belgium at 64,850 dollars. The United Kingdom’s average annual wage amounted to around 53,985 U.S dollars in the same year. In this year, the country with the lowest annual salary in Europe was Greece, at 25,980 pounds per year.
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Annual estimates of paid hours worked and earnings for UK employees by sex, and full-time and part-time, by age group.
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Key information about UK Household Income per Capita
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Average Earnings Excluding Bonus in the United Kingdom decreased to 5.60 percent in March from 5.90 percent in February of 2025. This dataset includes a chart with historical data for the United Kingdom Average Earnings Excluding Bonus YoY.
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.
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Experimental statistics of detailed industry wages from the Monthly Wages and Salaries Survey, with comparison industry output price data, from the article "Analysis of wage and price increases, UK: 2011 to 2023.
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This report shows average annual earnings for the following four earnings measures, provisionally showing overall figures for the NHS HCHS workforce (excluding primary care staff) in England in NHS Trusts and other core organisations in England and NHS Support Organisations and Central Bodies. Mean annual basic pay per FTE – is the mean amount of basic pay paid per 1 full-time equivalent post in a 12-month period. Mean annual earnings per person – is the mean amount paid to an individual in a 12-month period, regardless of the contracted FTE. Mean annual basic pay per person – is the mean amount of basic pay paid to an individual in a 12-month period, regardless of the contracted FTE. Mean annual non-basic pay per person – is the mean amount, over and above basic pay, paid to an individual in a 12 month period, regardless of the contracted FTE (this is further split into ten separate measures – see Appendix A for a list and descriptions) These figures are based on the most recent twelve months of data and are presented by staff group in the publication (Tables 1 & 2). This publication also includes tables which examine the non-basic pay elements in greater details (Table 3). Data are available every month from 30 September 2009 onwards. We have created a repository of the code used to produce the NHS Staff Earnings publication which is available on GitHub via the Related Links section below. Monthly NHS Workforce Statistics and monthly NHS Staff Sickness Absence reports and data relating to the General Practice workforce and the Independent Healthcare Provider workforce are also available via the Related Links below. We welcome feedback on the methodology and tables within this publication. Please email us with your comments and suggestions, clearly stating Monthly HCHS Workforce as the subject heading, via enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk or 0300 303 5678.
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For NHS staff in May 2020, Black men were paid 84p for every £1 paid to White men. Black women were paid 93p for every £1 paid to White women.
In April 2025, employees in the United Kingdom were earning a median pay of 2,521 British pounds per month, compared with 2,494 in the previous month.