ONS reported that:
In April 2020, the median weekly earnings for full-time employees went up by 0.1 per cent compared to the previous year, meaning that the average person took home about £585.50 per week, which works out at around £31,461 a year.
So the median salary was £31,461 last year.
For Londoners the median is approx £34k. The North East had the lowest median of approx £27k.
So that's what the middle person earns, and isn't skewed by mega higher earners.
The ONS also looks at median household equalivalised DISPOSABLE income.
This is post tax take home pay and equivalised which basically means that a household income is divided by the number of people in it. (It is more complicated than that, but in a nutshell ONS says lower incomes will come out as less and basically SAHP are accounted for).
The Median household income was £29,900 in the financial year ending 2020.
The mean was £36,900.
So in a nutshell. The normal average salary is above £30k.
The normal average household income after tax etc is about £30k.
(NB the ONS acknowledges that its figures don't account for the self-employed. Some of whom earn little, while others earn massive amounts).
But then of course the range is enormous and influenced by things like:
- region
- age
- gender
- education level
- profession
When PP said that most people are on minimum wage - that is categorically not true.
But equally people saying that £40k - £60k is average and standard are also not right.
The averages are laid out clearly above.
But it's hard to speak from outside your own experience. And for a PR in London, which similar professional job friends, who also hangs with bankers and lawyers - £60K will seem average if not low. And that works the other way round too.
- over half a million people (540,000) earn more than £120k per year.
- The top 1% of income tax payers are disproportionately male, middle-aged and London-based.
- it's annoyingly hard to put an exact figure on the number of people who earn £100k. In 2016 ONS had it at about 750,000 but a newspaper fact check suggested that was low. A million people in the UK earning £100k today is a reasonable assumption, looking at the data.
- The Low Pay Commission estimates that there were 2 million workers paid at or below the minimum wage in April 2019, around 7% of all UK workers. (So twice as many people earning minimum wage than earning £100k plus. But by no means a majority. And doesn't account for people who have more than one job, have a high earning spouse, or work part time around kids for NMW.
- The lowest earning part-time employees are concentrated in the elementary occupations, the 16 to 21 years age group and in food and beverage, and arts, entertainment and recreation industries. (ONS)
- Of all employee jobs, 15.1% were low-paid in 2020 (that is, were paid less than two-thirds of median hourly pay), when considered in terms of hourly earnings.
- High-paid employee jobs (those earning more than 1.5 times the median) have remained at a similar proportion of the total since the data series began for both hourly and weekly pay, averaging around 26% of all employee jobs across both the hourly and weekly pay data series.
So the two stats above show that more people significantly out earn the median than significantly under earn it. Of course a lot of people earn on or just under it, which is how it becomes the median. But there are more high paying jobs than low paying jobs.