Average UK Salary in 2025: How Good Is Your Salary?
Paycheck and wondered is this actually good or am I being mugged off by my employer well today we’re diving into the latest data showing exactly how much people in the UK are earning and not just the average salary oh no we’re going to go age by age location by location and industry by industry so that you can finally answer that burning question am I actually doing all right or should I do a complete career pivot and become a pig farmer in Shropshshire i don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying that pig farming didn’t quite make the top of the salary list so if you’ve ever wondered whether you’re overpaid underachieving or just bang average grab a pen grab a coffee and let’s get into it the latest data from the ONS the Office for National Statistics shows that 30.4 million people are on the UK payroll this year as part of this data you can see the breakdown by age location and industry and most interestingly you can see the breakdown at each percentile across the UK and that means you can see what salary you need to be in the top 50% 10% and 1% and we’re going to break that all down today now the ONS records this data in two ways the median pay and the mean pay for the purpose of this video we’re just going to look at the median pay because it’s generally more representative of what the average pay looks like in the UK and the reason for this is if you had five people all on different salaries but one person on an extreme salary say a CEO who’s earning multi-million pounds a year the medium pay would allow you to exclude that outlier and so the person that you pick would just be the person in the middle number three and they would be representative of the average pay in the UK now with a mean pay this CEO who’s earning millions of pounds a year will skew the numbers upwards because you’re taking an average of all five people so a small number of people earning a large amount of money will skew that average up so the ONS revealed that the median pay in the UK and the amount you need to earn to be in the top 50% of people here is £29,580 to be in the top 25% of earners you need to earn £45,036 per year that’s £3,753 per month before tax to be in the top 10% of earners you need to be earning £67,740 per year that’s £5,645 per month before tax when I saw this number I actually thought it would be higher and I think it’s probably a pleasant surprise to a lot of people that this number sits where it is so if you’re earning this amount or above congratulations you’re in the top 10% of earners in the UK that’s the top 3 million people but if we want to see how much the real top earners in the UK are earning let’s look at the top 5% we’re getting into some punchy numbers here but the top 5% earn 91,812 per year and that’s £7,651 per month before tax but what do the top 1% earn in the UK the creme de la creme well to be in this category you need to be earning over £190,000 per year that’s £15,882 per month pretty punchy and this is the income of £300,000 people in the UK now what jumped out at me when I was looking at these numbers is the disparity between the top 5% and the top 1% if you’re in the top 5% you’re earning just under £92,000 a year but to get into the top 1% you need to be earning 100k more and this is just indicative of the distribution of wealth in the UK a handful of people are earning a lot of money and certainly a lot more than the next 5% next 10% and this might be why a study by the New Statesman found that people who are earning 80k only thought that they were earning about average even those earning 40k and above still felt that they were earning about average or a normal amount of money even though they’re in the top 25 to 30% of earners in the UK and while these numbers might give you some bragging rights over your friends it’s worth thinking that you’re more likely to surround yourself with people who are similar to you that means if you go to a top university for example you’re more likely to have friends who are lawyers and earning significantly more money than the average person in the UK so if that’s you hopefully these numbers give you a bit of a gauge as to how you’re actually doing with regards to the whole population not just the circle of friends that you surround yourself with and speaking of people similar to you let’s jump into numbers by age to see how they might differ according to the different age bands and what the average salary is for each band if you’re 18 to 24 the average salary is £20,856 if you’re 25 to 34 the average salary is £32,100 for 35 to 49 year olds the salaries peak at £34,300 and they start to drop down as you approach the next age bracket which is 50 to 64 and at that age your salary decreases to just over £30,000 now if you’re 65 and over your average salary is just over £175,000 but it’s worth remembering that people at this age are more likely to be retiring and so you’ve got a smaller band of people to take the records from in this age bracket so perhaps unsurprisingly salaries peak between 35 and 49 years old and this is probably indicative of the experience that you’ve built up over that time period and the leadership positions that you’re likely to be in at that age but in what area of the UK are you most likely to be earning the highest average salary before we break down the regions of the UK and how much they’re earning on average let’s look at the other nations in the UK to see what their average earnings are currently and it’s time to dawn your kilts and eat some haggus the Scots come out winners with an average salary just under £30,000 per year and it’s bad news for our friends across the water with Northern Ireland coming in with £275,000 per year and not forgetting the Welsh they’re snuggled in the middle with just over £28,000 per year median pay so where in England would you earn the highest average salary the bronze medal to the east of England who have a median annual salary of just over £30,000 the silver medal goes to the Southeast who have a median annual salary of £31,000 and in perhaps the least surprising news this year London come in with just under £35,000 median annual salary but fear not we do have a wooden spoon for the bottom two regions in this annual salary race and in the penultimate position are the West Midlands with an average salary of just over £28,000 per year but the Wooden Spoon goes to Yorkshire and the Humber with an average salary of £275,000 as you can see the North South Divide is alive and kicking so if listening to these average salaries has perhaps been a bit depressing and you’re benchmarking lower than the average the one thing you could do is look at industries that are paying a higher average salary compared to others well the ONS breaks down this data by industry so if you’re looking for a top paying job here are the industries with the highest average salary and some of those with the lowest if you’ve got any uranium lying around that might come in useful because the top paying industry is energy production and supply with an average salary of over £53,000 per year and if your childhood ambition was to become one of the seven dwarfves then you’re in luck the second highest paying industry in the UK is mining and quarrying hi ho hi ho yeah enough of that and these are followed by your usual suspects finance and IT with both having an average salary of just over £46,000 so now let’s look at the bottom three industries so that if you’re in one of these industries you might be able to benchmark yourself against some of these top paying roles that we’ve just highlighted the industry with the third worst salary was arts and entertainment with an average salary of just under £20,000 followed by accommodation and food services who earn over £16,000 and then finally in last place households and extr territorial with an average salary of £14,300 now I’ve thrown quite a lot of numbers at you there and hopefully some of these are useful to try and get you thinking about industries that might be paying higher roles if you’re looking to pivot your job or how you are comparing against people in your region or people in your age bracket but I think when looking at these numbers what you really need to grapple with is whether having a highpaying job equals happiness and recently Yuggov put a survey to the public asking whether they’d rather have a highpaying job that didn’t make them happy or a lowpaying job where they were fulfilled which do you think the general public picked overwhelmingly the public voted for passion over pay with 64% saying they’d rather have a poorly paid job where they were happy than the other way round so whether these numbers inspire you to a career change or just give you some reassurance that you’re on the right track the important thing is actually what you do with that money that you get each month if you’re looking to build wealth for the long term do check out this video where I break down key habits that you need to maximize your paycheck .
- What is the average UK salary in 2025?
- What pay rise should I expect in 2025 in the UK?
- Is 28k a good salary in the UK in 2025?
- What is the average UK salary growth?
Good job