Employee earnings in the UK: 2025

Commentary on topics covered in the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) is split between three separate bulletins in 2025. Other commentary from the latest ASHE data can be found in:

• our Low and high pay in the UK: 2025 bulletin

• our Gender pay gap in the UK: 2025 bulletin

• Median weekly earnings for full-time employees were £766.60 in April 2025, which is a 5.3% increase on the year in nominal terms and a 1.1% increase in real terms; this figure is adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH).

• In April 2025, median weekly earnings for full-time employees increased across all major occupations and sector-level industries, when compared with April 2024.

• Among the major occupations, the largest growth in median weekly earnings for full-time employee jobs was in caring, leisure and other service occupations, with a 7.1% increase between April 2024 and April 2025; all low-paid major occupations saw increases in hourly pay (excluding overtime) above or close to the National Living Wage increase in April 2025.

• Across all regions and countries of the UK, Northern Ireland saw the highest growth in median weekly earnings for full-time employees (7.4%) in April 2025 compared with April 2024.

• Median gross annual earnings for full-time employees were £39,039 in April 2025, compared with £37,439 in April 2024, which is an increase of 4.3%.

In April 2025, median weekly earnings for full-time employees were £766.60, compared with £728.27 in April 2024 (an increase of 5.3%), continuing the upward trend observed in recent years. Median weekly earnings for part-time employees increased to £280.00 in April 2025 from £263.25 (an increase of 6.4%).

Median hourly earnings (excluding overtime) for full-time employees were £19.67 an hour in April 2025, compared with £18.66 in April 2024 (an increase of 5.4%).

Median gross annual earnings for full-time employees who had been in their jobs for at least a year were £39,039 in April 2025, compared with £37,439 in April 2024 (an increase of 4.3%).

In this bulletin, we mainly focus on estimates for median weekly earnings for full-time employees. For hourly and annual pay, please see our accompanying data tables. For hourly pay, see also our Low and high pay: 2025 bulletin and our Gender pay gap: 2025 bulletin.

In April 2025, median weekly earnings (in nominal terms) increased on the year by 5.3% for full-time employee jobs and by 6.4% for part-time employee jobs. They increased by 4.7% for all employee jobs (full-time and part-time combined) on the year.

When adjusted for inflation using our Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) time series, median weekly earnings in April 2025 increased by 1.1% for full-time employees and by 2.1% for part-time employees on the year.

Differences in pay annual growth rates between full-time and part-time employee jobs reflect differences in:

• the types of jobs

• the number of employees in full-time and part-time jobs

• how the composition of those jobs and employees has changed between 2024 and 2025

In April 2025, the share of part-time employee jobs (28.0%) was higher than in April 2024 (27.2%). Mean weekly total paid hours were lower, at 32.8 mean weekly hours in April 2025, compared with 33.1 mean weekly hours in April 2024, as Figure 3 shows. The higher proportion of part-time employee jobs in April 2025, compared with April 2024, can partly explain why pay growth in April 2025 is lower for all employees than for full-time and part-time employees.

Median gross weekly earnings for full-time employee jobs increased across all major occupational groups between 2024 and 2025. The largest increase was in the caring, leisure and other service occupations (7.1%). Managers, directors and senior officials also saw a large increase (6.7%) in median gross weekly earnings for full-time employee jobs.

Growth rates for median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees are affected by changes in the hours worked between years. This partly explains why we do not observe increases closer to the National Living Wage (NLW) and National Minimum Wage (NMW) rates in all low-paid major occupation groups. The NLW increase of 6.7% on 1st April 2025 is, however, reflected in the April 2025 annual growth rate for hourly pay (excluding overtime).

Across all employee jobs, both full and part-time, all lower-paid occupations saw annual increases in their median hourly pay (excluding overtime) above or close to the NLW: median hourly pay (excluding overtime) saw strong increases in:

• caring, leisure and other service occupations (7.3%)

• elementary occupations (7.1%)

• process, plant and machine operatives (6.3%)

• sales and customer service (5.8%)

More information is available in our Low and high pay: 2025 bulletin and in our accompanying tables.

Our interactive chart in Figure 5 allows you to compare annual earnings across occupations at our most granular level. Explore what the median annual earnings are for your occupation by searching for or selecting your occupation from the drop-down list in the interactive tool.

Figure 5: Annual full-time gross earnings by occupation

UK, April 2025

Notes:

1. Estimates for 2025 are provisional.

2. ASHE annual pay figures capture pay in employee jobs for employees that have been in the job for a year or more, and include pay affected by absence (for example, special leave or parental leave). ASHE annual figures are therefore not directly comparable to weekly or hourly pay figures.

3. Full-time is defined as employees working more than 30 paid hours per week (or 25 or more for the teaching professions).

4. Occupations as defined by the Standard Occupational Classification 2020.

Median gross weekly earnings (for full-time employees) increased across all industries between 2024 and 2025. The industry sectors that experienced the strongest growth were:

• financial and insurance activities (10.3%)

• administrative and support service activities (8.3%)

• electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply (8.3%)

• information and communication (6.5%)

Changes in the composition of the businesses in the ASHE responding sample between 2025 and 2024 explain part of the large increase observed in the financial and insurance activities sector.

In April 2025, median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees were £807.67 in the public sector (a 5.3% increase on the year) and £752.28 in the private sector (a 5.4% increase on the year). These different rates of pay growth are partly explained by the different composition of industries within the public and private sectors.

Across all regions and countries of the UK, Northern Ireland saw the highest growth in median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees (7.4%), in April 2025 compared with April 2024. The large increase observed in Northern Ireland is partly explained by public sector pay increases and awards that took place in early 2025. The regions with the smallest growth in median full-time earnings were the South East (2.9%) and Wales (4.2%).

Figure 8: Median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees for all local authorities by place of work 

Great Britain, April 2025

Notes:

1. Estimates for 2025 are provisional.

2. Employee jobs include those on adult rates with pay unaffected by absence.

3. Full-time is defined as employees working more than 30 paid hours per week (or 25 or more for the teaching professions).

Our interactive chart in Figure 8 allows you to explore the median pay levels in all local authorities in April 2025. Find what the median gross weekly earnings were in April 2025 in your local authority, by searching for or selecting an area from the drop-down list in the interactive chart.

Full-time and part-time

Full-time is defined as employees working more than 30 paid hours per week (or 25 or more for the teaching professions). Part-time is defined as employees working less than or equal to 30 paid hours per week (or less than 25 hours for the teaching professions).

Median

A measure of the average. The median is calculated by identifying the exact middle point in a set of observations. When the observations are ranked from lowest to highest, the median is the value in the exact middle of the observed values. It is our preferred measure of average earnings, as it is less affected by a relatively small number of very high earners than the mean.

National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage

The National Minimum Wage (NMW) is a minimum amount per hour that most workers in the UK are entitled to be paid. There are different rates of minimum wage depending on workers' ages and whether they are apprentices. The NMW applies to employees aged 16 to 20 years. The government's National Living Wage (NLW) was introduced on 1 April 2016 and, in 2025, applies to employees aged 21 years and over.

On the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) reference date in April 2025, the NMW and NLW rates were:

• £12.21 for employees aged 21 years and over

• £10.00 for employees aged 18 to 20 years

• £7.55 for employees aged 16 to 17 years

• £7.55 for apprentices aged 16 to 18 years and those aged 19 years and over who are in the first year of their apprenticeship 

Real earnings

Real earnings (earnings adjusted for inflation) are calculated by adjusting nominal (unadjusted) earnings using the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH). The CPIH is the most comprehensive measure of inflation. It extends the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) to include a measure of the costs associated with owning, maintaining and living in one's own home, known as owner occupiers' housing costs (OOH), along with council tax.

Standard Occupational Classification

The Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) is a common classification of occupational information for the UK. The most recent version of SOC, SOC 2020, was used for revised 2021 ASHE estimates and provisional 2022 ASHE estimates. More information on the impact of the change from SOC 2010 to SOC 2020 can be found in our Measures of employee earnings based on SOC 2020, UK: 2021 bulletin.

Data sources

The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) collects information on actual payments made to the employee and the hours on which this pay was calculated. It is based on employer responses for a 1% sample of employees, using HM Revenue and Customs Pay As You Earn (PAYE) records to identify individuals' current employers. All estimates for 2025 are provisional and relate to the pay period that includes 30 April 2025. Estimates for 2024 have been revised and relate to the pay period that includes 17 April 2024.

The ASHE achieved sample in 2025 was 174,000. The ASHE sample size was reduced during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic because of the challenges to data collection, from around 180,000 each year to less than 150,000 in 2020, 2021 and 2022. The ASHE sample size started recovering in 2023 and is now at its highest since 2019.

The analysis in this bulletin is based mainly on weekly pay, which is affected by both hourly rates of pay and hours worked or paid for. Our Low and high pay in the UK: 2025 bulletin looks in more detail at the distribution of pay based on hourly rates. This is particularly relevant for policy around the National Living Wage and National Minimum Wage rates.

Data methods

ASHE data are weighted to UK population totals from the Labour Force Survey (LFS), based on classes defined by region, occupation, age and sex.

From 2021, we moved our occupation coding to Standard Occupation Classification 2020 (SOC 2020), from SOC 2010. This means estimates for earnings in April 2021 on an SOC 2020 basis represent a break in the ASHE time series. Estimates will not be directly comparable with estimates for earnings on an SOC 2010 basis and, as such, should not be used in direct comparison with each other.

The composition of the employee workforce (the types of workers and the types of jobs) affects ASHE estimates. This can vary year on year. Differences in levels and growth rates in ASHE estimates reflect both changes in earnings and changes in the composition of the employee workforce, both in the overall UK population and in the ASHE sample.

Employers are asked to report employees' pay for the pay period including the ASHE reference date, which is set in April but varies year on year. The ASHE reference date is determined by the need to capture new minimum wage rates that start in early April and is dependent on when the Easter Holidays fall each year. In 2025, the ASHE reference date was on the last day of April (30th April), which was more than 10 days later than in 2024 and 2023, when the reference date was 17th and 19th April, respectively. Seasonal differences and the timing of Easter may lead to changes in businesses' responses to ASHE year on year.

In 2024, we introduced changes to the way we validated data, particularly higher earners' returns, to both the ASHE 2023 revised and 2024 provisional data. These changes have now been fully embedded into the ASHE standard production cycle for the foreseeable future, improving ASHE estimates of earnings of high earners within each occupation. However, these changes have not been applied to our back series and comparisons between 2022 and 2023 data should be treated with caution.

Since 2020, during and after the coronavirus pandemic, ASHE has shown some differences, compared with other earnings data sources, such as our Average Weekly Earnings dataset and our Earnings and employment from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information datasets. There are inherent reasons for differences between ASHE and other earnings data sources, as set out in our Comparison of labour market data sources methodology.

Additionally, it is likely that the following factors are contributing to the divergence between ASHE and other data sources since 2020:

• differential non-response

• weighting to the LFS 

• increased variance because of sample size reduction

• the way the bonus element of ASHE is captured

We are currently investigating possible further reasons for these differences, including carrying out reviews of our statistical methods to ensure they are up-to-date and adequate for the wider uses of ASHE data. Our plans to continue improving the quality of ASHE can be found in our accompanying blog, How the ONS is improving its annual earnings survey.

Uncertainty

Sampling variability for ASHE estimates are provided in our accompanying datasets.

More quality and methodology information

Our Guide to interpreting ASHE estimates methodology addresses common questions about our data.

More quality and methodology information on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our ASHE methodology and guidance and in our ASHE, Low pay and ASHE pension results QMI.

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in June 2013. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled "accredited official statistics".