Average salary UK 2026: £39,039 and take-home pay

ASHE is the ONS's main source on what employees earn. It is based on a large sample of employee jobs, and the latest edition, published on 23 October 2025, describes pay in April 2025. The 2026 edition had not been published when we checked these figures.

For full-time employees (more than 30 paid hours a week):

• Median annual pay: £39,039, up 4.3% on the year
• Mean annual pay: £48,512
• Median weekly pay: £766.60, up 5.3% in cash terms and 1.1% after inflation
• Median hourly pay (excluding overtime): £19.67

For part-time employees, median annual pay was £14,713 (median weekly pay £280). Taking full-time and part-time together, the median for all employees was £32,890 a year and the mean £40,269.

One detail worth knowing: the annual figures only include employees who have been in the same job for more than a year. They are not the salary on a job advert; they are what people actually received over the year to April.

There are two ways to describe the "average":

• Mean: add up everyone's pay and divide by the number of people. A small group of very high earners pushes it up.
• Median: line everyone up from lowest to highest pay and take the person in the middle. Half earn more, half earn less.

The ONS calls the median its preferred measure of average earnings, because it is less affected by a relatively small number of very high earners than the mean. In the UK the full-time mean (£48,512) is about 24% above the median (£39,039). That gap is the effect of the top end of the scale.

So when a headline talks about "the average salary", it is worth checking which one it means. If you want to know whether your pay is typical, the median is the better yardstick.

The ASHE figures are gross. To get to take-home pay, we applied the 2026/27 rates from GOV.UK:

• Personal Allowance: £12,570 tax free
• Basic rate income tax: 20% from £12,571 to £50,270
• Employee National Insurance: 8% between £12,570 and £50,270

For the median full-time salary of £39,039:

1. 1. Taxable income: £39,039 − £12,570 = £26,469
2. 2. Income tax: £26,469 × 20% = £5,293.80
3. 3. National Insurance: £26,469 × 8% = £2,117.52
4. 4. Take-home: £31,627.68 a year, about £2,636 a month

For the mean of £48,512, still below the higher rate threshold, the same sum gives about £38,448 a year, or £3,204 a month.

These are estimates. They assume the standard 1257L tax code and income tax in England, Wales or Northern Ireland (Scotland has its own bands), and no pension contributions or student loan repayments, which would reduce the figure. Also note that we are applying this year's tax rates to pay measured in April 2025.

ASHE also publishes percentiles, which are often more useful than any average. For full-time employees in April 2025:

• 10th percentile: £23,990 (10% earn less than this)
• 25th percentile: £29,262
• 50th percentile (median): £39,039
• 75th percentile: £54,009
• 90th percentile: £76,903

A few examples of where a full-time salary lands:

• £25,000: between the 10th (£23,990) and 20th (£27,495) percentiles. A full-time job on the National Living Wage, around £24,785 a year at 37.5 hours, is in this range.
• £30,000: between the 25th and 30th (£30,935) percentiles.
• £45,000: just above the 60th percentile (£44,203).
• £60,000: just above the 80th percentile (£59,083).
• £77,000: around the 90th percentile.

Pay rises quickly through your twenties and thirties, peaks in your forties and then eases off. Median full-time annual pay by age group, April 2025:

• 18 to 21: £23,596
• 22 to 29: £32,347
• 30 to 39: £40,668
• 40 to 49: £44,244
• 50 to 59: £41,866
• 60 and over: £36,467

If you are 25 and earning below the national median, that is normal: the median for your age group is about £6,700 lower.

Where you work makes a big difference. Median full-time annual pay by region of work, April 2025:

• London: £49,692
• South East: £39,983
• Scotland: £39,719
• East: £38,597
• North West: £37,361
• South West: £37,195
• West Midlands: £37,064
• Northern Ireland: £37,052
• Wales: £35,796
• Yorkshire and The Humber: £35,682
• East Midlands: £35,600
• North East: £34,403

The median in London is about 44% higher than in the North East. London also shows the widest gap between mean and median: its full-time mean is £70,275, against a median of £49,692. Of course, rent and travel costs in London are higher too, so the gap in what people have left over is smaller than the gap in pay.

The median full-time man earned £41,832 a year in April 2025 and the median full-time woman £35,670. Annual pay also depends on how many hours people work, so the ONS measures the gender pay gap on median hourly pay excluding overtime instead. On that measure the gap was 6.9% for full-time employees (down from 7.1% a year earlier) and 12.8% for all employees, full time and part time together (down from 13.1%).

ASHE comes out once a year. For a more recent picture, the ONS publishes Average Weekly Earnings (AWE) every month. It measures something slightly different: the mean pay of all employees in Great Britain, full time and part time together.

The latest release, on 15 September 2026, covering May to July 2026, shows:

• Average weekly total pay: £756 (£705 excluding bonuses)
• Annual growth: 3.9% in total pay and 3.5% in regular pay
• Growth after inflation (CPIH): 0.9% for total pay and 0.6% for regular pay

£756 a week over 52 weeks is roughly £39,300 a year. It looks close to the ASHE median, but it is a mean that includes part-time workers, so the two numbers should not be compared directly. The useful part of AWE is the trend: pay is still rising faster than prices, but only by around half a percentage point to one point a year. The next release is due on 20 October 2026.

Knowing where you sit on the national scale is interesting, but it says little about how you are actually doing. Two people on £39,039 can be in completely different positions depending on their rent, their debts, how much they save and where they live.

A more useful number is your own net worth: what you own minus what you owe. It reflects your salary, but also every decision you make with it. If you have never worked it out, our guide on how to calculate your net worth takes about ten minutes.

If you want to keep that figure up to date, Neto lets you record your income, spending and accounts, and works out your net worth as what you have minus what you owe. It doesn't connect to your bank: you decide what to record. It is free to start, on iPhone and Android.

Figures checked on 2 October 2026. Sources: ONS, Employee earnings in the UK: 2025 (ASHE headline figures); ONS ASHE 2025 provisional tables: Table 1 (mean, median, percentiles, part-time, men and women), Table 6 (age) and Table 3 (region); ONS, Gender pay gap in the UK: 2025; ONS, Average weekly earnings in Great Britain: September 2026; GOV.UK, Income Tax rates and Personal Allowances and rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027 (tax and National Insurance).