What is the UK average salary? Median, mean and take-home pay explained

What is the UK average salary? The short answer

The figure most often quoted for what is the UK average salary comes from the Office for National Statistics, based on the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings. On the April 2025 reference date, median gross annual pay for full-time employees was £39,039, up 4.3% from £37,439 a year earlier. Median weekly pay for full-time employees was £766.60, a 5.3% nominal increase and 1.1% in real terms after adjusting for CPIH inflation. Median hourly pay excluding overtime was £19.67, up from £18.66.

Widen the group to all employees, full-time and part-time together, and the typical figure falls. Summaries of the same ONS data put the median for all employees at £32,890 a year, the mean at £40,269 and the median for part-time employees at £14,713. Median weekly pay across all employees is around £642.50, with median hourly pay around £18.00.

The ONS also publishes Average Weekly Earnings, a more timely monthly series. For the period covering July 2026, average weekly earnings were estimated at £756 for total pay and £705 for regular pay, growing 3.9% and 3.5% on the year. Average Weekly Earnings is not a rate of pay for a typical job; it divides total pay by total employees, so it shifts when the balance of full-time and part-time work changes.

Median, mean and why "average" is ambiguous

Two different numbers can both be called the average. The mean adds every salary together and divides by the number of jobs. The median ranks all salaries and takes the exact middle point, so half of jobs pay more and half pay less.

The ONS prefers the median because a small number of very high earners barely move it, while they pull the mean upwards. The gap between the two tells you something useful: the mean for all employees, £40,269, sits well above the median of £32,890, which is what you would expect in a labour market with a long tail of high earners. For full-time employees the benchmark mean is around £45,800 against a median of £39,039.

When you see a headline about pay growth, check which measure is being used. Median growth and mean growth can differ in the same month, and both can differ from the growth in advertised salaries. If you want to compare your own pay with a national benchmark, the median is usually the fairer comparison because it describes the middle of the market rather than the arithmetic total.

Gross pay, take-home pay and advertised pay

Every figure above is gross pay, before Income Tax, National Insurance, pension contributions and any student loan repayments. Take-home pay is always lower, and the gap widens as pay rises because larger portions of income are taxed at higher rates.

As a rough illustration only, someone on £39,039 gross, paying tax under standard UK-wide bands with the usual Personal Allowance, the basic rate of Income Tax at 20%, and employee National Insurance at 8% on earnings above the primary threshold, would keep somewhere around £2,600 a month. That is arithmetic, not a quote. Pension contributions through salary sacrifice, a student loan, a company car or Scottish Income Tax rates would all change it.

Advertised pay is a third thing again. A job advert usually shows a basic salary, sometimes with London weighting, shift allowances, overtime or bonus on top. Not all of that lands in an employer's payroll return in the same way, which is one reason the advertised market and the official average can drift apart. If you are weighing up an offer, compare like with like: basic pay against basic pay, total package against total package.

Where you live and how old you are

ONS ASHE-based regional medians for all employees range widely. London sits highest at £39,778, followed by the South East at £35,215 and the East at £34,104. Scotland's median is around £33,061, the South West £31,432, the West Midlands £31,345 and the North West £31,330. Wales at £30,732, the East Midlands at £30,690, Yorkshire and the Humber at £30,682 and the North East at £29,584 sit lower, with Northern Ireland around £31,252.

Age shapes pay too. Median annual pay peaks in the 40 to 49 bracket at £37,734, with ages 30 to 39 close behind at £36,000, and eases back to £34,835 for ages 50 to 59 and £26,750 for the 60-plus group, where part-time working is more common. Employees aged 18 to 21 have a median of £13,069. These are midpoints of wide distributions, so plenty of people in every region and age band earn well above or below them.

What the official statistics actually measure

ONS ASHE is based on employer responses covering a 1% sample of employee jobs, identified through HMRC Pay As You Earn records. It counts employee jobs, not people, so someone holding two jobs appears twice. Annual pay figures relate to employees who have been in the job for at least a year and include pay affected by absence, such as parental or special leave, which is why they are not directly comparable with the weekly and hourly figures. The 2025 estimates are provisional and relate to the pay period including 30 April 2025.

Average Weekly Earnings is drawn from the Monthly Wages and Salaries Survey, sampling around 9,000 employers and covering roughly 12.8 million employees in Great Britain. Neither series includes the self-employed, and neither reflects what a candidate is offered at interview.

So when an advertised salary for a role sits well above the national median, that is not necessarily wrong. It may reflect a specific occupation, a specific region, a shortage skill, or a total package rather than basic pay. What the statistics give you is a distribution to place an offer against, not a rule about what any individual job should pay. If you want to see how this plays out for particular roles, the salary articles cover occupation-level context.

The minimum wage sets the floor

Minimum pay is set by government, not by the market, and it changes each April. At the ASHE reference date in April 2025, GOV.UK National Living Wage rates were £12.21 an hour for employees aged 21 and over, £10.00 for 18- to 20-year-olds, and £7.55 for 16- to 17-year-olds and apprentices in their first year. The age 21 and over rate has since risen to £12.71 an hour for 2026/27, which at 37.5 hours a week is around £24,785 gross a year, or roughly £2,065 a month before tax.

That floor matters when you read averages. A full-time job on the National Living Wage sits at roughly three-quarters of the all-employee median and close to two-thirds of the full-time median, which is one reason the gap between the lowest-paid and the typical worker has narrowed over recent years.

Scotland and the tax you actually pay

Income Tax is devolved in Scotland. Scottish taxpayers pay the Scottish Rate of Income Tax on non-savings, non-dividend income, using bands and rates set by the Scottish Government, while National Insurance remains UK-wide. The practical effect is that two people on the same gross salary in Edinburgh and Manchester can take home different amounts, and the difference tends to grow at higher salaries.

If you are comparing offers across the border, compare net pay rather than gross. A calculator that asks for your tax region will give a more useful answer than a simple gross-to-net rule of thumb, and it is worth checking whether any relocation package or London-style weighting is pensionable.

How to use these benchmarks sensibly

Start by choosing the right comparator. If you work full time, the full-time median of around £39,039 is the closest match. If you work part time, or want a whole-market view, the all-employee median of around £32,890 is more representative. If your pay includes bonus, overtime, shift pay or London weighting, compare the whole package, because the medians mostly reflect basic pay.

Use the salary index for a quick national read, the salary data pages to look at figures by group, and UK Average Salary if you want the headline benchmark explained again. Regional and age breakdowns are useful when you are deciding where to work or how your pay compares with peers at the same career stage.

Finally, remember that no published average can tell you what you are personally worth. It tells you where the middle of the market sits, and how far your own pay is from that middle. Use it as a starting point for a negotiation or a career decision, not as a verdict. Check offer letters, contract terms and official GOV.UK or ONS releases before you rely on any single number.