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Official ONS earnings · 195 occupations

Salaries in South West 2026

What people actually earn across South West, by occupation — median gross annual pay from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings.

Typical occupation

£32,163

The midpoint across every occupation ONS publishes for this region

Lowest paid

£4,111

Median pay in the lowest-paying occupation here

Highest paid

£74,712

Median pay in the highest-paying occupation here

ONS doesn't publish a single “average wage” per region in this dataset, so the typical figure above is the midpoint of 195 published occupation medians — it describes the spread of occupations, not the average worker. Read the methodology before using it to evaluate an offer.

Highest-paying occupations in South West

Marketing, sales and advertising directors £74,712 Cyber security professionals £73,291 IT business analysts, architects and systems designers £66,327 Head teachers and principals £65,735
Senior police officers £64,975
Research and development (R&D) managers £59,333
Sales accounts and business development managers £55,579 Civil engineers £55,472
Electrical engineers £54,986
Health care practice managers £54,592
Business and financial project management professionals £53,765 Human resource managers and directors £52,370 Mechanical engineers £51,657 Programmers and software development professionals £51,631
Production managers and directors in construction £50,000
Purchasing managers and directors £49,504
Engineering project managers and project engineers £48,988 Financial managers and directors £48,756
Engineering technicians £48,621
Production managers and directors in manufacturing £48,113
Police officers (sergeant and below) £47,712
Production and process engineers £47,354
IT managers £47,276
Health services and public health managers and directors £47,125
Management consultants and business analysts £46,884

Lowest-paying occupations in South West

School midday and crossing patrol occupations £4,111
Kitchen and catering assistants £9,411
Cleaners and domestics £11,791
Retail cashiers and check-out operators £13,203
Sales and retail assistants £14,278
Teaching assistants £15,458
Educational support assistants £16,938
Horticultural trades £17,334
Receptionists £17,482
Early education and childcare practitioners £17,817

Compare South West with another region

See which occupations pay more on each side.

vs East of England vs East Midlands vs London vs North East vs North West vs Scotland vs South East vs Wales vs West Midlands vs Yorkshire and The Humber

Source: Office for National Statistics, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2025 provisional), Table 15. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.