Official ONS earnings · 2026 provisional
What salary puts you in the top 10% in the UK?
A full-time salary of £82,680 a year. The median full-time employee earns £40,911, and one in ten earns less than £25,288. Type a salary to see where it sits.
Top 10% starts at
£82,680
Full-time employees, gross annual pay (90th percentile)
Top 25% starts at
£56,842
Full-time employees (75th percentile)
Median
£40,911
Half of full-time employees earn more, half earn less
After Income Tax and National Insurance (2026/27, England), the top-10% threshold takes home about £4,876 a month; the median takes home about £2,748. The gap after tax is smaller than the gap before it.
UK salary percentiles 2026
Gross annual pay. A salary at the 90th percentile is higher than 90% of salaries, so it marks the top 10%.
| Percentile | Top | Full-time employees | All employees | Part-time employees |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 90th | 10% | £82,680 | £73,791 | £34,599 |
| 80th | 20% | £62,500 | £55,388 | £25,581 |
| 75th | 25% | £56,842 | £50,457 | £22,866 |
| 70th | 30% | £52,647 | £46,501 | £20,807 |
| 60th | 40% | £46,367 | £39,698 | £17,794 |
| Median (50th) | 50% | £40,911 | £34,229 | £15,192 |
| 40th | 60% | £36,398 | £29,810 | £12,743 |
| 30th | 70% | £32,393 | £25,616 | £11,129 |
| 25th | 75% | £30,600 | £22,932 | £9,842 |
| 20th | 80% | £28,857 | £19,187 | £8,415 |
| 10th | 90% | £25,288 | £12,000 | £4,942 |
All-employee figures include part-time jobs, which is why every all-employee percentile is lower than the full-time one. Based on 18,184,000 full-time and 6,972,000 part-time employee jobs in the survey weighting.
Men and women, full-time
The same percentiles for full-time men and full-time women. The gap widens towards the top: see the gender pay gap by occupation.
| Percentile | Full-time men | Full-time women | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 90th (top 10%) | £90,703 | £70,000 | 22.8% |
| 75th (top 25%) | £61,863 | £51,021 | 17.5% |
| Median (top 50%) | £43,934 | £37,471 | 14.7% |
| 25th (top 75%) | £32,500 | £28,509 | 12.3% |
| 10th (top 90%) | £26,624 | £23,789 | 10.6% |
What the top 10% actually do
A salary above £82,680 is typical in only a few dozen of the occupations ONS measures. The UK pay report ranks every occupation by median pay, and each salary guide shows the full range for that job by region. For any specific salary, the after-tax pages show the percentile alongside the take-home figure.
Salary percentile FAQs
What salary is top 10% in the UK?
A gross salary of £82,680 a year puts a full-time employee in the top 10% of UK full-time earners (2026 provisional). Across all employees, including part-time, the threshold is £73,791.
What salary is top 1% or top 5% in the UK?
ONS's earnings survey stops at the 90th percentile, so this page does not give a top 5% or top 1% salary. HMRC publishes percentile points for total income, which is a different measure (it includes self-employment, pensions and investment income, and is per taxpayer, not per job), so the two sets of figures are not interchangeable.
What is the median UK salary?
The median full-time salary is £40,911 a year: half of full-time employees earn more and half earn less. Across all employees the median is £34,229, lower because it includes part-time jobs. The mean is higher than the median, because a small number of very high salaries pull it up.
Is £50,000 a good salary in the UK?
£50,000 is more than about 66% of full-time employees earn, and well above the median of £40,911. Whether it is good for you depends on the job, the region and the cost of living, which is why every salary page on this site shows the pay range by region.
Does this include bonuses, overtime and part-time work?
The figures are gross annual pay for the tax year, including bonuses and overtime, for employees who were in the same job for at least a year. The full-time rows cover employees working more than 30 paid hours a week (25 for teachers); the all-employee rows include part-time jobs.
Where do the percentiles come from?
From the Office for National Statistics Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2026 provisional), a 1% sample of HMRC PAYE records. It measures employee jobs, so the self-employed are not included.
Source: ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2026 provisional, Office for National Statistics, Open Government Licence v3.0. Percentiles between the published points are interpolated and rounded, so a result reads "about". See the methodology.