The Office for National Statistics published its Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings for 2026 on 22 October. It is the largest pay survey in the country: it reads employers' payroll records rather than asking people what they earn, and it covers about 25 million jobs. These are the provisional 2026 figures, measured in April 2026. ONS will revise them in October 2027.
The headline: the median employee in the UK earned £34,229 a year before tax, up 4.2% on the year. The median full-time employee who had been in the same job for at least a year earned £40,911, up 4.5%. Part-time employees earned a median of £15,192 a year, up 3.6%. Full-time hourly pay excluding overtime rose 5.7%, from £19.68 to £20.81.
To see what those figures leave you with after tax, use the take-home pay calculator or the £34,000 after tax page; to see where any salary sits against these medians, use the UK salary percentiles.
Which big jobs got the biggest rises
Every change below is ONS's own year-on-year figure, which compares with the revised 2025 estimate. We rank only occupations with at least 200,000 jobs and a median that ONS estimates with a sampling error (coefficient of variation) of 10% or less. All figures are median gross annual pay for all employees, full-time and part-time together.
- Kitchen and catering assistants: £13,397, up 11.6%. About 314,000 jobs. Most are part-time, so annual pay moves with hours as well as rates.
- Care workers and home carers: £23,045, up 7.7%. 647,000 jobs, one of the largest occupations in the country. Full-time care workers earned £28,738 (up 4.6%). Care worker salary.
- Other nursing professionals: £39,484, up 7.5%. 702,000 jobs. This is the ONS group for nurses outside the midwifery, community, specialist, practitioner, mental health and children's groups, which is where adult ward nurses sit. Adult nurse salary.
- Specialist medical practitioners: £98,542, up 7.1%. 221,000 jobs.
- Programmers and software developers: £58,770, up 5.9%. 380,000 jobs; full-time £59,863. Software engineer salary.
- Police officers (sergeant and below): £52,121, up 5.8%. 232,000 jobs. ONS left this annual figure out of its 2025 provisional tables; the revised 2025 figure, published alongside, is £49,276.
- Warehouse operatives: £28,073, up 5.7%. 426,000 jobs.
At the other end, among the same large occupations: production managers and directors in manufacturing fell 3.9% to £50,802 (453,000 jobs); IT managers fell 0.4% to £55,686; and university lecturers were flat at £46,357 (up 0.2%). A falling median does not always mean pay cuts: it also moves when the mix of people in a job changes.
The fastest risers of any size
Widening the net to every occupation with at least 20,000 jobs (and still a sampling error of 10% or less), the biggest rises were insurance underwriters (£47,330, up 21.8%), chartered architectural technologists and planning officers (£41,502, up 17.6%), IT network professionals (£56,096, up 16.8%) and actuaries, economists and statisticians (£59,799, up 16.0%). Smaller occupations swing more from year to year, so treat these as one year's movement rather than a trend. The full tables are on our pay trends page.
Where you work: London pulls further ahead
By the region where people work, median full-time annual pay in April 2026 was:
- London: £53,132 (up 6.2%)
- South East: £41,664 (up 3.9%)
- Scotland: £41,466 (up 4.5%)
- East of England: £40,531 (up 4.5%)
- South West: £39,078 (up 5.0%)
- West Midlands: £38,628 (up 4.3%)
- North West: £38,599 (up 3.4%)
- Northern Ireland: £38,203 (up 3.2%)
- Yorkshire and The Humber: £37,519 (up 5.2%)
- Wales: £37,330 (up 4.2%)
- East Midlands: £36,975 (up 4.0%)
- North East: £36,460 (up 5.9%)
The gap between a full-time worker in London and one in the North East is now £16,673 a year. Across all employees, London also had the fastest rise of any region (up 6.7%) and Wales the slowest (up 2.8%). These regional figures come from ASHE Table 3, and every one has a sampling error under 2.5%. Compare any two on our regional salary pages.
The gender pay gap fell again
ONS's headline measure compares the median hourly pay, excluding overtime, of men and women working full-time. In April 2026 it was 6.8%: £21.51 an hour for men against £20.05 for women. That is down from 7.2% in April 2025 and 9.4% a decade ago, according to ONS's gender pay gap bulletin.
Across all employees the gap is 12.3% (down from 13.0%). It is wider because women are far more likely to work part-time, and part-time jobs pay less an hour. Among part-time employees, women out-earn men: the gap is minus 2.1%. Our gender pay gap page breaks it down by occupation.
About these figures
All figures are from ONS's Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2026 (provisional), Tables 14 and 3, published under the Open Government Licence. Medians, not averages: the mean is pulled up by a small number of very high earners (the 2026 mean across all employees was £42,926, £8,697 above the median). Annual figures cover employees who were in the same job for at least a year. How we use the data, and what we leave out, is on our methodology page.