UK Salary Growth 2015–2025: +41% Pay, +38% Prices, by Job
A decade of ONS ASHE data for 165 UK occupations: bar staff +78%, care workers +70%, university lecturers +12%. Who beat inflation and who fell behind.
CareerMetrics Research
Data-driven career insights from the CareerMetrics team
Rewritten 19 August 2026. An earlier version of this article compared 2015 and 2025 figures for occupation codes that the ONS re-used for different jobs when it moved to SOC 2020 in 2021; several of its headline “winners” were artefacts of that change. This version uses only occupations whose definition is unchanged across the decade.
Between April 2015 and April 2025 the median full-time salary in the UK rose from £27,600 to £39,039: a gain of 41.4%. Over the same ten years prices, measured by CPIH, rose 37.8%. For the typical worker, a decade of pay rises bought about 2.6% more than it did in 2015.
That national figure conceals the most important change in the UK pay structure of the last ten years. The bottom of the labour market has been pulled up hard, mostly by the minimum wage; the professional middle and top have, in real terms, stood still or gone backwards. Below, occupation by occupation, is who beat inflation and who did not, from the Office for National Statistics’ Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings.
The short version
- Of 165 occupations with a consistent ten-year series and at least 20,000 jobs, 74 beat inflation and 91 did not. The median occupation’s pay rose 36.5%, a fraction behind prices.
- The lowest-paid third rose fastest. Occupations paying under £23,000 in 2015 saw median pay rise 50%, and 46 of 55 beat inflation. The top third rose 30%, and only 13 of 55 kept up with prices.
- Biggest rises: bar staff (+77.6%), hairdressers and barbers (+75.8%), waiters (+71.9%), retail cashiers (+71.7%), care workers (+70%). The National Living Wage went from £6.50 an hour in April 2015 to £12.21 in April 2025, an 88% increase, and these are the jobs it sets.
- Biggest real-terms losers: vehicle assemblers (−0.7% in cash, −28% real), medical and dental technicians, therapy professionals, taxation experts, university lecturers (+12.2%, −18.6% real), chief executives (+15.4%, −16.2% real), actuaries and statisticians, mechanical engineers.
- Most of the decade’s growth came after 2021. For almost every occupation, the four inflation years 2021–2025 delivered more nominal pay growth than the six years before them.
How we measured it
ASHE records the pay of a 1% sample of UK employees every April. For each occupation we compare the median gross annual pay of full-time employees in April 2015 and April 2025. Inflation is ONS CPIH, April 2015 to April 2025 (+37.8%).
The important caveat is the occupation classification. The ONS replaced SOC 2010 with SOC 2020 in 2021 and re-used many four-digit codes for different jobs. We include an occupation only where the SOC 2010 and SOC 2020 definitions carry the same name, which leaves 276 occupations with a full 2015–2025 series; the tables below use the 165 of those with at least 20,000 employee jobs, so that small-sample swings do not dominate. Occupations new in SOC 2020 (data analysts, cyber security professionals, primary teachers as a separate group) cannot be measured over ten years and are left out. ONS still treats 2021 as a break in series even for unchanged codes, so decade comparisons are indicative rather than exact.
The great compression
Sort the 165 occupations by what they paid in 2015 and split them into thirds.
| Occupations by 2015 pay | 2015 full-time median range | Median pay growth 2015–25 | Beat inflation (37.8%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lowest-paid third | £13,053 – £22,883 | +50.0% | 46 of 55 |
| Middle third | £22,989 – £31,731 | +31.8% | 15 of 55 |
| Highest-paid third | £32,136 – £86,597 | +30.0% | 13 of 55 |
The same pattern shows in the ONS’s nine major occupation groups: caring, leisure and other service occupations +58.2%, sales and customer service +52.3%, elementary occupations +52.4%, process and plant operatives +45.6%, skilled trades +40.9%, against professional occupations +31.7% and managers and directors +38.2%. (Group boundaries moved a little in 2021, so these are approximate.)
This is the National Living Wage doing exactly what it was designed to do. It replaced the adult minimum wage (£6.50 in April 2015, £6.70 by the time it was superseded) at £7.20 in April 2016, was set a target of two-thirds of median hourly pay, and reached £12.21 in April 2025. A full-time week at the minimum rose from roughly £12,700 a year to roughly £23,800. Every occupation whose pay sits on or near that floor was carried up with it.
The 20 biggest rises, 2015 to 2025
| Occupation | Jobs (2025) | 2015 | 2025 | Change | Real change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bar staff | 84,000 | £13,053 | £23,182 | +77.6% | +28.9% |
| Hairdressers and barbers | 38,000 | £13,810 | £24,279 | +75.8% | +27.6% |
| Waiters and waitresses | 146,000 | £13,339 | £22,936 | +71.9% | +24.8% |
| Retail cashiers and check-out operators | 51,000 | £14,340 | £24,622 | +71.7% | +24.6% |
| Care workers and home carers | 581,000 | £16,155 | £27,468 | +70.0% | +23.4% |
| Senior care workers | 101,000 | £17,509 | £29,381 | +67.8% | +21.8% |
| Kitchen and catering assistants | 322,000 | £13,736 | £22,886 | +66.6% | +20.9% |
| Cleaners and domestics | 411,000 | £14,498 | £24,130 | +66.4% | +20.8% |
| Electrical and electronic trades n.e.c. | 20,000 | £29,416 | £48,571 | +65.1% | +19.8% |
| Elementary administration occupations n.e.c. | 23,000 | £16,287 | £26,631 | +63.5% | +18.7% |
| Sports and leisure assistants | 42,000 | £16,551 | £26,934 | +62.7% | +18.1% |
| Sales and retail assistants | 895,000 | £15,420 | £25,056 | +62.5% | +17.9% |
| Business, research and administrative professionals n.e.c. | 83,000 | £36,015 | £58,341 | +62.0% | +17.6% |
| Chefs | 152,000 | £18,608 | £30,010 | +61.3% | +17.0% |
| Cleaning and housekeeping managers and supervisors | 48,000 | £17,891 | £28,605 | +59.9% | +16.0% |
| Call and contact centre occupations | 35,000 | £17,026 | £27,035 | +58.8% | +15.2% |
| Food, drink and tobacco process operatives | 147,000 | £17,873 | £28,243 | +58.0% | +14.7% |
| Cooks | 39,000 | £15,578 | £24,228 | +55.5% | +12.9% |
| Pharmacy and optical dispensing assistants | 47,000 | £15,319 | £23,783 | +55.3% | +12.7% |
| Security guards and related occupations | 93,000 | £21,783 | £33,832 | +55.3% | +12.7% |
Seventeen of the twenty paid under £19,000 in 2015. The exceptions are instructive: the electrical and electronic trades “not elsewhere classified” group (+65.1%, on a small 20,000-job base) and business and research professionals n.e.c. (+62%), both catch-all categories whose membership can shift, and security guards, a low-paid occupation that has additionally seen licensing and demand push pay up faster than the minimum.
The real-terms losers
Only one large occupation saw its median fall in cash terms, but 91 of 165 failed to keep up with prices and 24 lost more than 10% of their purchasing power.
| Occupation | Jobs (2025) | 2015 | 2025 | Change | Real change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assemblers (vehicles and metal goods) | 40,000 | £32,136 | £31,919 | −0.7% | −27.9% |
| Medical and dental technicians | 32,000 | £28,402 | £29,931 | +5.4% | −23.5% |
| Therapy professionals n.e.c. | 22,000 | £35,146 | £37,599 | +7.0% | −22.4% |
| Taxation experts | 30,000 | £45,222 | £49,850 | +10.2% | −20.0% |
| Higher education teaching professionals | 246,000 | £47,097 | £52,835 | +12.2% | −18.6% |
| Chief executives and senior officials | 133,000 | £86,597 | £99,944 | +15.4% | −16.2% |
| Natural and social science professionals n.e.c. | 40,000 | £37,054 | £43,384 | +17.1% | −15.0% |
| Actuaries, economists and statisticians | 43,000 | £45,362 | £53,342 | +17.6% | −14.7% |
| Arts officers, producers and directors | 23,000 | £38,336 | £45,534 | +18.8% | −13.8% |
| Further education teaching professionals | 55,000 | £35,311 | £42,218 | +19.6% | −13.2% |
| Mechanical engineers | 55,000 | £42,631 | £51,110 | +19.9% | −13.0% |
| Public relations professionals | 39,000 | £31,206 | £37,563 | +20.4% | −12.6% |
| Engineering professionals n.e.c. | 148,000 | £40,380 | £48,776 | +20.8% | −12.3% |
| IT operations technicians | 69,000 | £29,157 | £35,259 | +20.9% | −12.2% |
| Quality control and planning engineers | 50,000 | £35,912 | £43,592 | +21.4% | −11.9% |
Two groups dominate this table. The first is education above school level: university lecturers, a 246,000-job occupation, had the smallest rise of any occupation with more than 200,000 jobs, and further education lecturers are not far behind. The second is the engineering and technical professions: mechanical engineers, engineering professionals n.e.c., quality engineers, IT operations technicians, medical and dental technicians. These are well-paid jobs that are not near the minimum wage and, for most of the decade, were not in a sector bidding up pay.
The chief executives figure needs care: it is the median of a broad 133,000-job category that includes the heads of small organisations, not FTSE boardrooms, and the median rose 13.1% in the last year alone. But across the decade as a whole, the best-paid occupation group in the table had the sixth-worst real-terms record.
The big employers: two very different halves of the decade
The occupations that employ the most people show where the growth came from. For nearly all of them, the four years from 2021 to 2025 produced more pay growth than the six years from 2015 to 2021.
| Occupation | Jobs (2025) | 2015 → 2025 | Real change | 2015 → 2021 | 2021 → 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Care workers and home carers | 581,000 | +70.0% | +23.4% | +25.9% | +35.1% |
| Sales and retail assistants | 895,000 | +62.5% | +17.9% | +26.0% | +28.9% |
| Nursing auxiliaries and assistants | 466,000 | +54.8% | +12.3% | +19.0% | +30.1% |
| Large goods vehicle drivers | 204,000 | +46.3% | +6.2% | +13.1% | +29.4% |
| Other administrative occupations n.e.c. | 728,000 | +44.1% | +4.6% | +18.1% | +22.0% |
| Programmers and software developers | 360,000 | +43.4% | +4.0% | +7.3% | +33.6% |
| Metal working production and maintenance fitters | 223,000 | +39.3% | +1.1% | +9.0% | +27.8% |
| Teaching assistants | 255,000 | +36.0% | −1.3% | +9.8% | +23.9% |
| Production managers and directors in manufacturing | 479,000 | +31.1% | −4.9% | +0.6% | +30.4% |
| Chartered and certified accountants | 75,000 | +30.3% | −5.4% | +8.1% | +20.6% |
| Management consultants and business analysts | 241,000 | +30.0% | −5.7% | +4.0% | +25.0% |
| Secondary education teaching professionals | 466,000 | +27.0% | −7.8% | +10.2% | +15.3% |
| Financial managers and directors | 430,000 | +21.8% | −11.6% | −4.2% | +27.1% |
| Higher education teaching professionals | 246,000 | +12.2% | −18.6% | +2.8% | +9.2% |
Two things stand out. First, the 2015–2021 period was close to a pay freeze for professional work: production managers +0.6%, higher education +2.8%, management consultants +4%, financial managers −4.2%, programmers +7.3% over six years. Almost everything those occupations gained over the decade, they gained in the inflation years after 2021, which is why so many of them end up behind prices overall. Second, the occupations at the bottom grew in both halves, and faster in the second: the minimum wage rose every year, then rose faster.
The programmer line is worth a second look for anyone in tech: the profession’s celebrated pay boom is real but entirely a 2021–2024 event, and as our analysis of UK tech pay this year shows, it had already stalled by the 2025 survey.
What a decade of compression means for a career
The gap between low-paid and mid-paid work has narrowed sharply. A care worker earned 43% of a secondary teacher’s median in 2015 and 58% in 2025; against an accountant the ratio moved from 42% to 55%, and against a mechanical engineer from 38% to 54%. For anyone weighing a degree or a professional qualification purely on pay, the premium over a skilled non-graduate job is smaller than it was ten years ago. What each degree pays at 1, 5 and 10 years puts real numbers on the graduate side of that.
A decade of “pay rises” can still be a real-terms cut. If your occupation is in the second table, you have had one, whatever your payslip said each April. The Salary Forecast tool now projects each occupation’s own consistent series forward, and Where Do I Stand? shows where your current salary sits within the occupation’s range today.
The next decade will not look like this one. The National Living Wage’s catch-up to two-thirds of median pay is essentially complete, so the mechanical uplift at the bottom is fading (the April 2026 rise was 4.1%, against 6.7% the year before). The public sector is currently growing pay faster than the private sector (6.1% against 2.8% in the three months to June 2026). And the professions that stood still for six years did, eventually, move. Which occupations led the most recent year is a different list again.
Every occupation in this article links to its own page with the full 2015–2025 series, percentile range and gender breakdown; all 412 are on the occupation index.
Sources: Office for National Statistics, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2015 (revised) and 2025 (provisional), Table 14.7a, median gross annual pay for full-time employees by four-digit occupation; occupations included only where the SOC 2010 and SOC 2020 unit groups share the same definition, and with at least 20,000 employee jobs in 2025. UK medians from the ASHE 2015 and 2025 bulletins (£27,600 and £39,039). Inflation: ONS CPIH index (series L522), April 2015 to April 2025, +37.8%. Minimum wage rates: GOV.UK. Crown copyright, Open Government Licence v3.0.