Annual report · 2026

What Britain really earns

Every figure here comes from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings — a survey of PAYE records covering 24.9 million employee jobs. No estimates of our own, no self-reported numbers.

By Alexandru-Sorin Cojoc · ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2025 provisional

The headline number

Median gross annual pay, all employees

£32,890

▲ 4.1% on the previous year

Half of UK employees earn less than £32,890, half earn more. The mean is £40,269 — higher, because a relatively small number of very large salaries pull the average up. That gap between median and mean is the first thing worth understanding about UK pay: the "average" salary you see quoted is not what a typical person earns.

Bottom 10%

£11,425

earn less than this

Lower quarter

£22,060

earn less than this

Upper quarter

£48,283

earn more than this

Top 10%

£69,381

earn more than this

Full-time and part-time

Most pay comparisons quietly mix the two, which distorts everything downstream. Full-time median pay is £39,039; part-time is £14,713. The difference is mostly hours worked, not hourly rates — which matters enormously when reading the gender figures below.

The top and bottom of the scale

Occupations with at least 20,000 jobs, so these are real career paths rather than statistical noise.

Highest paid

1 Aircraft pilots and air traffic controllers £107,712
2 Information technology directors £90,081
3 Marketing, sales and advertising directors £90,000
4 Chief executives and senior officials £89,835
5 Specialist medical practitioners £88,997
6 Train and tram drivers £76,176
7 Head teachers and principals £70,977
8 Functional managers and directors n.e.c. £69,996
9 Financial managers and directors £65,336
10 Electrical engineers £59,930

Lowest paid

1 Hairdressers and barbers £12
2 Kitchen and catering assistants £12
3 Waiters and waitresses £12
4 Bar staff £12
5 Coffee shop workers £12
6 Early education and childcare practitioners £13
7 Receptionists £13
8 Early education and childcare assistants £13
9 Playworkers £13
10 Animal care services occupations n.e.c. £13

Many of the lowest figures reflect part-time hours rather than low hourly rates — bar staff and waiting work is overwhelmingly part-time, so annual pay looks far lower than the hourly rate implies.

Who got a rise, and who didn't

Change in median pay against the previous year.

Biggest rises

Specialist medical practitioners

£88,997

+26.9%

Financial and accounting technicians

£53,265

+26.3%

Aircraft pilots and air traffic controllers

£68

+24%

Elementary administration occupations n.e.c.

£23,005

+23.5%

Brokers

£26

+22.3%

Retail cashiers and check-out operators

£14,018

+20.4%

Train and tram drivers

£76,176

+19.3%

Insurance underwriters

£23

+18.5%

Specialist medical practitioners

£45

+17.3%

Managers and directors in the creative industries

£50,868

+16.2%

Biggest falls

Barristers and judges

£34,253

-37.6%

Postal workers, mail sorters and messengers

£29,761

-6.3%

Financial managers and directors

£65,336

-5.4%

Architects

£23

-5.1%

Mental health nurses

£21

-4.4%

Air travel assistants

£28,808

-4.3%

Clergy

£16

-4.2%

Housekeepers and related occupations

£16,618

-3.6%

Actuaries, economists and statisticians

£51,520

-3.5%

Paramedics

£50,294

-3.4%

A falling median doesn't always mean pay cuts. If an occupation takes on many junior staff in a year, its median falls even when nobody's salary went down.

The gender pay gap

Men — median

£38,466

Women — median

£27,850

Gap

27.6%

This is not the figure usually quoted in the news. The ONS headline gender pay gap measures hourly pay excluding overtime for full-time employees, and is far smaller. The 27.6% above is the gap in gross annual pay across all employees, full-time and part-time together — larger mainly because women are much more likely to work part-time and are therefore paid for fewer hours. Both are real; they answer different questions, and quoting one while meaning the other is the most common mistake in pay-gap reporting.

Where the gap is widest

Of 360 occupations where ONS publishes both a male and female median.

Pre-press technicians £24,521 £14 99.9%

Information technology directors £49 £25 48.6%

Managers and proprietors in other services n.e.c. £27 £15 42.4%

Taxation experts £30 £20 33.8%

Financial and accounting technicians £27 £18 32.8%

Managers and directors in the creative industries £31 £21 32.7%

And where it reverses

Occupations where women's median pay is at or above men's.

Precision instrument makers and repairers £15 £28,539 -191565.5%

Forestry and related workers £10 £16 -62.2%

Marketing, sales and advertising directors £27 £43 -60.4%

Driving instructors £14 £23 -60%

Communication operators £13 £19 -53.9%

Other psychologists £19 £29 -53.6%

A pay gap is a difference in average pay between two groups. It is not by itself evidence of unequal pay for the same job, which is unlawful in the UK — gaps are driven largely by which occupations and hours each group works.

Pay by region

The midpoint of each region's published occupation medians.

London £40,110 South East £34,801 Scotland £34,625 East of England £33,543 North West £33,462 West Midlands £32,969 Wales £32,489 South West £32,163 Yorkshire and The Humber £31,735 East Midlands £31,587 North East £30,758

Northern Ireland is absent because ASHE covers Great Britain; NISRA publishes it separately. A region can rank high simply by containing more high-paying occupations, so comparing job by job tells you more than the headline.

Where do you sit in all this?

The national picture is only useful once you can place yourself in it.

Find your percentile Browse by job title Take-home pay

About this report

All figures are gross annual pay from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2025 provisional. ASHE is an accredited official statistic based on a 1% sample of employee jobs drawn from HMRC PAYE records. Rankings exclude occupations with fewer than 20,000 jobs, because small groups swing sharply between editions. Where ONS suppresses an estimate for quality reasons, it is left out rather than filled in. Our full methodology explains how job titles map to ONS occupation groups.

Published by AXSystem Ltd (Company No. 17085060). Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The ONS does not endorse this analysis. Figures are estimates and are not financial advice. Free to quote with attribution and a link to this page.