Average UK Salary 2026: £39,039 — By Age, Region, Sector
The median UK full-time salary is £39,039 (ONS ASHE 2025, up 4.3%). Full breakdown by age, region, industry, occupation and gender, and where you rank.
CareerMetrics Research
Data-driven career insights from the CareerMetrics team
Updated 19 August 2026 with the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025, the most recent official figures. ASHE 2026 is due in late October; we will update again on publication day.
The median UK salary for a full-time employee is £39,039 a year. That is the headline figure from the Office for National Statistics’ Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) for April 2025, up 4.3% on the year before. Half of full-time employees earn more than that, half earn less.
It is a useful number and a misleading one. Include part-time workers and the median falls to £32,890 — a distinction we take apart in median salary UK, which sets the full-time and all-employees figures side by side for every major occupation. Look at the mean instead of the median and it rises to £48,512, pulled up by a small number of very high earners. Move from the North East to London and the full-time median jumps from £34,403 to £49,692. Below is the full picture, every figure from the ONS, with links to the tools on this site that put your own salary against it.
The national picture
| Measure (April 2025) | Figure | Change on 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Median annual pay, full-time employees | £39,039 | +4.3% |
| Mean annual pay, full-time employees | £48,512 | +6.0% |
| Median annual pay, all employees (full- and part-time) | £32,890 | +4.1% |
| Median annual pay, part-time employees | £14,713 | +5.9% |
| Median hourly pay, full-time (excl. overtime) | £19.67 | +5.4% |
| Median weekly pay, full-time | £766.60 | +5.3% nominal, +1.1% after CPIH inflation |
Pay rose faster than prices in the year to April 2025, but only just: the ONS puts the real-terms rise in full-time weekly earnings at 1.1%. Since then growth has slowed further; the ONS labour market release of 18 August 2026 put regular pay growth at 3.5%, worth 0.5% after inflation. When ASHE 2026 is published the full-time median will most likely land a little above £40,000.
Is your salary good? Where each figure ranks
The fastest way to read your payslip is against the full-time distribution.
| Full-time employees, April 2025 | Annual pay |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile (lowest-paid tenth earn up to) | £23,990 |
| 25th percentile (lower quartile) | £29,262 |
| Median | £39,039 |
| 75th percentile (upper quartile) | £54,009 |
| 90th percentile (top tenth earn above) | £76,903 |
So a full-time salary of £30,000 sits just above the bottom quarter; £45,000 is comfortably above the median; £55,000 puts you in the top quarter; £77,000 in the top tenth. For a more precise answer use Where Do I Stand?, which places your salary against the percentiles for your own occupation rather than the whole workforce — a £40,000 nurse and a £40,000 software developer are in very different positions.
Average salary by age
Full-time median pay climbs steeply through the twenties, peaks in the forties and eases back from 50.
| Age group | Median full-time pay | Change on 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| 18–21 | £23,596 | +7.3% |
| 22–29 | £32,347 | +3.8% |
| 30–39 | £40,668 | +4.4% |
| 40–49 | £44,244 | +4.9% |
| 50–59 | £41,866 | +5.2% |
| 60+ | £36,467 | +4.1% |
The 18–21 group had the biggest rise, a direct effect of the National Living Wage increasing 6.7% in April 2025. Peak median pay, £44,244 at 40–49, is 37% above the late-twenties figure. Our full breakdown of UK salary by age has the quartiles, the men-versus-women split and what to do at each stage.
Average salary by region
| Region (place of work) | Median full-time pay | Change on 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| London | £49,692 | +4.7% |
| South East | £39,983 | +2.4% |
| Scotland | £39,719 | +3.7% |
| East of England | £38,597 | +4.4% |
| North West | £37,361 | +6.2% |
| South West | £37,195 | +4.6% |
| West Midlands | £37,064 | +6.1% |
| Northern Ireland | £37,052 | +8.2% |
| Wales | £35,796 | +4.5% |
| Yorkshire and the Humber | £35,682 | +3.7% |
| East Midlands | £35,600 | +5.0% |
| North East | £34,403 | +4.2% |
| United Kingdom | £39,039 | +4.3% |
London’s median is 27% above the UK figure and 44% above the North East, and its mean (£70,275) shows how concentrated the highest salaries are in the capital. But the fastest growth last year was at the other end of the table: Northern Ireland (+8.2%), the North West (+6.2%) and the West Midlands (+6.1%) all outpaced London, while the South East (+2.4%) was the slowest region in the country. Whether London pay is worth it after housing costs is a different question, which we take on in cost of living vs salary by region and London vs Manchester.
Average salary by industry
The ONS classifies employers by industry section. Full-time medians range across a £30,000 spread.
| Industry | Median full-time pay | Change on 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Financial and insurance activities | £58,488 | +12.3% |
| Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply | £55,469 | +4.7% |
| Information and communication | £52,264 | +8.8% |
| Mining and quarrying | £50,943 | −6.6% |
| Professional, scientific and technical activities | £46,208 | +5.7% |
| Construction | £43,100 | +4.2% |
| Public administration and defence | £40,879 | +4.0% |
| Water supply, sewerage and waste | £40,738 | +3.4% |
| Transportation and storage | £40,056 | +5.4% |
| Education | £39,999 | +4.6% |
| Manufacturing | £38,956 | +4.9% |
| Real estate activities | £36,565 | +5.8% |
| Administrative and support services | £36,109 | +8.4% |
| Human health and social work | £35,744 | +3.7% |
| Other service activities | £33,537 | +4.8% |
| Wholesale and retail trade | £33,158 | +3.0% |
| Arts, entertainment and recreation | £32,871 | +3.2% |
| Agriculture, forestry and fishing | £32,784 | +3.4% |
| Accommodation and food service | £28,687 | +5.0% |
Finance and insurance had by far the biggest rise (+12.3%), and its mean of £92,103 against a median of £58,488 is the most skewed distribution of any industry: a sector of ordinary salaries with a very long tail of bonuses at the top. Information and communication (+8.8%) and administrative and support services (+8.4%) also grew well ahead of the national rate; mining and quarrying, a small sector of 35,000 full-time jobs, was the only one to fall.
Average salary by occupation
Industry tells you who you work for; occupation tells you what you do, and it explains more of the variation in pay. By major group:
| Occupation group | Median full-time pay |
|---|---|
| Managers, directors and senior officials | £56,653 |
| Professional occupations | £48,739 |
| Associate professional occupations | £37,960 |
| Skilled trades | £36,093 |
| Process, plant and machine operatives | £33,835 |
| Administrative and secretarial | £30,461 |
| Elementary occupations | £27,620 |
| Caring, leisure and other service | £27,198 |
| Sales and customer service | £26,959 |
Within those groups the range is enormous. A few reference points from the ASHE 2025 occupation tables: financial managers and directors £76,447, solicitors £56,977, software developers £56,914, GPs £55,494, chartered accountants £50,062, primary school teachers £45,939, nurses £42,300, LGV drivers £39,905, plumbers £37,881, care workers £27,468 and sales and retail assistants £25,056. All 412 occupations are on the occupation index, each with its full percentile range and ten-year trend, and our analysis of which jobs got the biggest pay rises ranks them by last year’s change.
The gender pay gap
The ONS’s headline measure is the gap in median hourly pay for full-time employees. In April 2025 it was 6.9%, down from 7.1% a year earlier; for all employees, where women are more likely to work part-time, it was 12.8%. It has fallen by more than a quarter in a decade. Among part-time employees the gap runs the other way: women earn 2.9% more per hour than men.
In annual terms the gap is wider because men work more paid hours: the median full-time man earned £41,832 and the median full-time woman £35,670. And it opens up with age. The full-time hourly gap is 0.9% at 22–29, 3.9% at 30–39, 9.1% at 40–49 and 12.5% at 50–59. Our article on the gender pay gap by career goes occupation by occupation.
Public vs private sector
Public-sector employees had a higher median (£40,806 full-time against £38,396 in the private sector; £34,943 against £32,376 for all employees) but a lower mean, because the private sector contains nearly all of the very highest earners: its 90th percentile was £83,847 against £66,153 in the public sector. Growth was similar in the year to April 2025 (4.1% public, 4.8% private). The comparison is heavily shaped by who works where — the public sector is weighted towards graduate professions, the private sector towards retail and hospitality — and by pensions, which do not appear in these figures. Public vs private sector pay goes through it properly.
What this means for you
- Compare against your occupation and region, not the national median. A national figure of £39,039 is a starting point. Your real benchmark is people doing your job where you live: Where Do I Stand? does that in a few seconds.
- Know which direction your occupation is moving. Pay grew 4.3% on average last year, but some occupations rose 15–25% and some fell. The Salary Forecast tool projects your occupation’s own trend.
- Remember the arc. Median pay rises from £32,347 in your twenties to £44,244 in your forties and then falls. Lifetime earnings are what a career choice is really worth.
- Watch the real figure. A 4.3% rise against 4.1% inflation is standing still. If your own rise this year is below 3.5%, the current national rate, you are falling behind.
Sources: Office for National Statistics, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025 (provisional, published 23 October 2025): Table 1 and bulletin “Employee earnings in the UK: 2025” (headline medians, means, hourly and weekly pay, real-terms change); Table 6.7a (age); Table 7.7a (region, place of work); Table 4.7a (industry section); Table 13.7a (public and private sector); Table 14.7a (occupation); “Gender pay gap in the UK: 2025”. Figures are gross annual pay for employees on adult rates who have been in the same job for more than a year; medians unless stated. ONS Labour market overview, UK: August 2026 for current pay growth. Crown copyright, Open Government Licence v3.0.