How is the median salary in the UK so high?

[MellowAquaBalonz]

The median gross annual salary for full-time employees in the UK in April 2024 was £37,430. This represents a 6.9% increase compared to £35,004 in April 2023. London's median salary is notably higher, at £47,500.

Those salaries are more often found in tech/banking/consulting etc. I am on a management consultancy grad scheme in London and it's only 40k off the bat, 50k once I am promoted in 2 years etc. And thousands applied for this.

I thought most people in the UK were in low-paid service jobs like hairdressing, shop assistants etc.

Of course. It’s the mean. Median is a different calculation which is more useful for skewed distributions like wages. Maybe we need some graphs?!

I wouldn’t consider it “pretty basic grunt work” to be a railway engineer as you need a BS degree in Mechanical or Civil Engineering to qualify, but I agree with your overall point that desk jobs aren’t always the best paid jobs.

Average = mean
I know what the median is, it’s not the average.

I was referring to the labourers who don't need a BSc! I did mention the supervisors/engineers separately who'd be paid more and would be the ones with the degrees.

Sorry:
”There are railway line engineers working anti social hours earning over £100k doing pretty basic "grunt" work, whilst their supervisors/engineers are earning even more.”

I thought you were referring to Jr vs Sr engineers, rather than non-engineers and engineers as you referred to both groups as “engineers”

@SpiritAdder

Have a look at these

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/average

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average

This is from Oxford - I can't do a link
I am not sure why the picture isn't showing.

@SpiritAdder you are wrong.

Mode is the value that has the highest frequency in the dataset, mean can be arithmetic (simply summing up all values and dividing by the number count) or it can be geometric. Median, is the value that is midway with half of the values above and half below. All of these are conceptually trying to identify the average.

You can also have simple average, weighted average, etc.

So there are many ways of calculating an average and the mean is not the only one.

You are absolutely incorrect I'm afraid. All are measures of average (or central tendency) and which measure you choose depends on the distribution of the data you are analysing. Arithmetic mean is used for data with a Gaussian distribution, median for data with a skewed distribution (such as income and price data), mode for data that is binned (quantised), geometric mean for data which follows an underlying power law (e.g. share price time series). There are others, such as harmonic mean, and Tukey mean which are again used for specific data distributions.

The ONS have a handy guide here if this is new to you: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn04444/

@SpiritAdder - Just Google "types of average" and you'll find plenty of sites explaining that there are several types of average, one of which is the mean average. But it's not the only one.

They are all attempts at giving some insight into a set of data depending on what is important to you. The median tells you there are as many values below this point as above, the mean gives you a true average the sum of the values divided by the number of points. The mode is the most frequently occurring value and that could theoretically be anywhere along the distribution.

Lots of unqualified workers refer to themselves as engineers as do their employers. There's no definition as to who can call themselves an engineer and who can't. Even within the engineering profession, there are different levels of qualifications meaning different levels of engineer. Lots of people are formally regarded as "engineers" when they don't have degrees etc. It's a very loose term, and yes, the labourers are often called "engineers" just as someone who lays the cable for a domestic broadband connection is called a "telecoms engineer" despite likewise basically being a labourer without formal engineering qualifications.

The reality is that you need to know the underlying data and how the average has been defined before any figure of average has any meaning at all. If you don't understand statistics then arguably any "average" figure is meaningless to you as you don't understand the bases upon which it has been calculated.

To really call yourself an Engineer you should be a member of one of the institutes, Member of the Institute of Civil Engineers, or Mechanical Engineers, or Electrical Engineers, etc. But anyone who can hold a screwdriver or wield a spanner calls themselves an engineer

I’m the opposite where people think my job is more well paid than it is, work for a car brand (think luxury like Porsche) and customers always ask which I drive
mate I’m on min wage

Someone with a Masters in Applied Maths from Cambridge, recently started on £90k. what do they do for a living?

My DH is an Electrical Engineer and is a technician member of IET (I think) . He left school at 15 (aug baby) and did an apprenticeship but has no degree.

My DS 28 dropped out of his engineering degree when he left school, and is now a manufacturing techinician and has been taken on to do apprenticeship degree. He earns around 50k included bonus. He is hoping for a rise when he completes his degree next year.

Why are you comparing your just out of uni salary to a number that assimilates the salaries of people over lifetime of work? 37K isn't particularly high at all. Also, your post suggests that 2 or 3 years out of uni you will.be on 50k. Surely you realise that this starting point and trajectory are way above what many start with and what many end up on? Why do you think most people are on the minimum.wage? I'll be honest and admit that I've never thought about how.many people are on the minimum wage/part time, but as a management consultant you must surely be bright enough to recognise that many people earn far over 37k including teachers, doctors, solicitors, civil servants, many people in business etc.

Yes dear.

The guys installing domestic broadband connections or servicing your boiler are no more "labourers" than they are engineers. They are technicians.

That's a 'median' average. Try finding the 'mean' or 'mode' averages instead. They will give different figures.

I always find it way more easier to look at the graphical data then just take set points. This graph is a couple of years old but was the most recent one I could find.

OP you don’t seem to be accounting for the levels of salary that come with experience. My first FTE salary as a temp straight out of uni was £14.5k. After additional qualifications and hard work I was earning over £100k by age 30. My PAYE salary peaked at about £250k in my 40s before I became self-employed. £39k would be a high median salary if it were only looking at salaries in people’s first year of work but not if it is looking at all salaries.

Why are you asking OP? Do you feel that your 40k graduate salary is too low? If it makes you feel better I don’t earn that much more than you, with more than a decade experience, including management, in a job that requires a PhD, HTH.

Sorry, only just caught up with this thread and can sort of see why OP is ‘upset’ about median salaries. I started in a graduate management consultant role in 2025 (horrifyingly 20 years ago!!) on £55k and grad salaries gave definitely not kept up with inflation / overall economics. However, I feel that over the past 20 years there as been increasingly an understanding that grad doesn’t mean ‘better’ and that companies should pay for experience or sought after skill sets rather than the glut of graduates, without any exceptional skills, that have flooded the job market over the past 2 decades. I count myself incredibly lucky and know that if I was graduating now, that I would stand a chance in today’s job market.

I think you're unhappy with your starting salary. It does sound low for the top management consultancies (eg McKinsey, Bain etc), am assuming this is one of the Big 4 accountancy type firms?
I would look at the progression after the 2 years. And bear in mind, you are still in your early 20s, the question is whether you can increase fairly signficantly over the next 10 years, as then it starts to plateau off a bit.