National pay statistics hide as much as they show. Across all UK employees the median rose 4.1% between the 2024 and 2025 editions of the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings. In the West Midlands, some occupations saw nearly five times that, and a few went backwards. This is the regional table, occupation by occupation, for the part of the country that sits closest to the national average on almost everything.
All figures are median gross annual pay for all employees, from the 2025 provisional regional occupation tables of ASHE. One rule governs the ranking: ONS publishes a sampling error alongside every regional estimate, and only occupations where that error is 10% or less are ranked. Regional samples are small. Of 157 West Midlands occupations with a year-on-year change published, 43 clear that bar. The other 114 are real figures, but ONS says not to lean on them, and a list of "fastest risers" built on figures with 20% error would mostly be a list of noise.
The fastest risers
- Transport and distribution clerks and assistants — £34,827, up 19.4%. Around 7,000 jobs. The logistics back office, in the region that is the country's logistics hub.
- Financial administrative occupations n.e.c. — £26,873, up 16.2%. The catch-all for finance admin roles. Sampling error exactly 10%.
- Road transport drivers n.e.c. — £30,044, up 16.1%. 13,000 jobs: the drivers who are not LGV or van drivers.
- Business and financial project management professionals — £57,264, up 13.3%. 24,000 jobs, and the best-paid occupation in the top ten.
- Teaching assistants — £18,939, up 12.6%. 18,000 jobs. The all-employees figure for a largely part-time job; still the lowest-paid occupation in this list by a distance. Regional page.
- Police officers, sergeant and below — £47,320, up 12.2%. 28,000 jobs. Regional page.
- Human resources and industrial relations officers — £32,891, up 11.6%.
- Cleaners and domestics — £9,744, up 11.4%. 35,000 jobs. An all-employees median for an occupation where most work is part-time; ONS publishes no full-time regional split.
- Other nursing professionals — £36,551, up 11.3%. 46,000 jobs, the largest group in the table.
- Packers, bottlers, canners and fillers — £24,816, up 11.2%.
Just behind: production managers and directors in manufacturing at £48,224, up 10.9% on 44,000 jobs, and national government administrative staff at £31,230, up 10.0%.
What the list has in common
Six of the twelve are in logistics, manufacturing or public service, and the three largest groups by headcount, nursing professionals, production managers and cleaners, are all up by more than 10%. What is missing is as telling: no professional services occupation, no IT role, no finance role above administrative grade. The rises in this region were concentrated in the middle and lower half of the pay distribution, in occupations where pay is set by national agreements or by minimum wage uprating rather than individual negotiation.
Cleaners are the clearest case. An 11.4% rise in the median for a group of 35,000 people is consistent with the National Living Wage increase of April 2025 passing through a workforce paid at or near it. Teaching assistants, nursing professionals and police officers are all paid on national scales. ASHE records the outcome of all of those, not the negotiations behind them.
Where pay stood still or fell
The same 43 precise estimates, from the other end:
- Postal workers, mail sorters and messengers: £27,859, down 5.5%
- Higher level teaching assistants: £21,759, down 2.0%
- Engineering professionals n.e.c.: £48,401, down 0.7%
- Stock control clerks and assistants: £27,716, down 0.1%
- Assemblers and routine operatives n.e.c.: £25,807, up 0.9%
- Metal working production and maintenance fitters: £37,315, up 1.9%
- Programmers and software developers: £47,744, up 2.0% (20,000 jobs) — regional page
- Large goods vehicle drivers: £39,285, up 2.8% (21,000 jobs) — regional page
The software developer figure deserves a second look. Nationally the occupation's median rose 4.2%, to £55,587. In the West Midlands it rose 2.0%, to £47,744, so the region's developers earn £7,843 less than the national figure and the gap widened. London developers, at £74,284, earn 56% more. The broader group ONS calls "Information technology professionals" did better in the region, up 7.1% to £51,508, so this is specific to development roles rather than IT as a whole.
The fall for postal workers is the largest decline among the precise estimates, and the only one above 2%. One year of ASHE cannot say whether it reflects a change in the mix of jobs or in pay for the same job.
The occupations that could not be ranked
The 114 occupations with imprecise regional estimates include most of the region's professional workforce. That is not a flaw in the data so much as a fact about sample sizes: a survey of 1% of PAYE records catches thousands of nurses in a region and a few dozen actuaries. ONS publishes the figures it has and says how reliable each one is. The regional pages on this site follow the same rule, quoting every published figure and ranking only the precise ones; the West Midlands overview lists every occupation the region has a figure for.
What it means if you work here
If you are in one of the top ten occupations above, a pay rise this year that was below the figure listed means your employer fell behind the regional market, not just inflation. If you are a software developer or an LGV driver, the opposite applies: a 3% rise kept pace with a market that barely moved. For anything else, look up the national figure first, since it rests on a far larger sample, then check whether the West Midlands page carries a precise regional estimate before assuming the region differs from the country.
And a caveat that applies to every regional comparison: these are year-on-year changes in a median, unadjusted for inflation, from a survey with a stated margin of error. A 10% rise with a 10% sampling error is a rise, but not a precise one. The trends page applies the same threshold nationally, where the samples are ten times larger and the rankings correspondingly firmer.