Chief Executive Salary in Scotland

What most chief executives actually earn

Half of chief executives across the UK earn between £48,429 and £141,253. Earning above £141,253 puts you in the top quarter of the profession.

This range is UK-wide — ONS publishes no regional breakdown of the spread for this occupation.

Where this figure comes from

ONS occupation group

Chief executives and senior officials

SOC 2020 code

1111

Measure

Gross annual pay, all employees

Edition

ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2025 provisional

ONS publishes a sampling error of 19.6% for this figure and asks that anything above 10% is treated as imprecise — too few people in this region answered the survey for this occupation. The figure is shown because it is the one ONS published, but it is not firm enough to rank Scotland against anywhere else, so this page doesn't.

ONS doesn't measure “chief executive” as its own category. These figures are for the wider group “Chief executives and senior officials”, which includes this role alongside others. ONS group covers chief executives and senior officials across every sector.

Source: Office for National Statistics, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Figures are estimates from a survey of PAYE jobs and are not financial advice.