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Trust & transparency

Salary data methodology

How we collect, check and present anonymous salary submissions — and where the data should be treated with caution.

Last reviewed: 15 July 2026

Who publishes this site?

WhatDoIEarn.co.uk is maintained by the WhatDoIEarn Editorial Team. Our purpose is to make UK pay information easier to understand while being honest about the limits of self-reported data. Editorial pages are reviewed against the methodology on this page before publication.

What our dataset contains

The figures shown on salary pages come from anonymous submissions made directly to WhatDoIEarn.co.uk. A submission can include job title, annual or annualised gross salary, UK region, employment type, experience level, company size, remote status and optional demographic information.

Our figures are not official government statistics, are not weighted to represent the whole UK workforce and should not be treated as financial or employment advice.

Validation and abuse prevention

  • Hourly pay is annualised using 2,080 hours; daily pay is annualised using 260 working days.
  • Annualised values below £8,000 or above £500,000 are rejected at submission.
  • A visitor can submit no more than three entries per hour.
  • Matching submissions from the same privacy-preserving IP hash, role and salary are rejected for 24 hours.
  • Job titles are normalised so common variants can be analysed together.
  • Entries marked as suspicious by moderation are excluded from published calculations.

We do not normally request a payslip or contact an employer. A submission is therefore self-reported unless explicitly marked as verified.

How statistics are calculated

The average is the arithmetic mean of included annual salaries. The median is the middle value after salaries are sorted. Percentiles are calculated from the ordered sample and describe the submitted dataset, not every worker in that occupation.

Regional pages use only submissions matching both the normalised role and selected region. National pages combine eligible submissions from all represented UK regions.

Sample-size policy

1–2 submissions

Very limited evidence. Regional pages are normally excluded from search indexing.

3–9 submissions

Early indication only. Results may change materially after new submissions.

10+ submissions

More useful directional evidence, while still self-reported and unweighted.

Official reference sources

When an article needs broader labour-market context, we prefer primary UK sources. The Office for National Statistics describes the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) as a comprehensive source for pay and working hours. ASHE is based on employer-supplied information from a sample of PAYE jobs and uses a different methodology from our voluntary dataset.

Editorial and AI policy

Automation may help draft or structure an article, but publication requires data-backed claims, sample-size disclosure, internal quality checks and a clear limitations section. We do not permit invented salary figures, unsupported trends or articles that duplicate an existing search intent.

Corrections and contact

Salary data changes as new submissions arrive. If you find an error, unsupported statement or duplicated article, email [email protected]. Anonymous contributors can remove their own submission using the deletion code supplied after submission.