The latest detailed UK salary figures by age show that full-time employees aged 40–49 had the highest median gross weekly pay in April 2025: £870 a week. That is the equivalent of £45,240 a year if simply multiplied by 52, although it is not the official annual-pay median.
The latest age-specific figures come from the 2025 provisional Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), released on 23 October 2025 and covering the pay period including 30 April 2025. As of 10 August 2026, there is not yet a definitive 2026 salary-by-age table; the next detailed ASHE release is expected in October 2026.
How to read this guide: “Average salary” is commonly used search language, but the figures below are mainly median gross pay for UK employees in full-time jobs. Median means that half of employees earn more and half earn less. The figures are before tax, National Insurance, pension contributions and other deductions.
UK median salary by age
The most useful headline comparison is full-time median annual gross pay. The annual figures below are the 2025 ONS-derived series reproduced by Statista; the official ONS ASHE Table 6 workbook is the primary source.
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| Age group | Median annual pay | Approximate monthly gross equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| 16–17 | Not shown in the annual series below | See weekly figures |
| 18–21 | £23,596 | £1,966 |
| 22–29 | £32,347 | £2,696 |
| 30–39 | £40,668 | £3,389 |
| 40–49 | £44,244 | £3,687 |
| 50–59 | £41,866 | £3,489 |
| 60 and over | £36,467 | £3,039 |
| All ages* | £39,039 | £3,253 |
Monthly figures are annual pay divided by 12 and are not monthly take-home pay. The all-ages annual figure covers full-time employees who had been in their jobs for at least a year, so it is not exactly the same population as every age-group figure.
Important: these are gross figures. For example, a £40,000 salary does not mean £3,333 arrives in your bank account each month. Your take-home pay depends on the tax year, tax code, whether you live in Scotland, pension contributions, student-loan repayments, salary sacrifice and other deductions.
The directly published weekly figures
ONS and the House of Commons Library provide a directly verifiable weekly view of the same age pattern. Weekly pay is useful for comparing the typical pay packet, but it should not be silently relabelled as official annual salary.
| Age group | Median weekly pay | Simple annualisation: weekly pay × 52 |
|---|---|---|
| 16–17 | £373 | £19,396 |
| 18–21 | £499 | £25,948 |
| 22–29 | £648 | £33,696 |
| 30–39 | £805 | £41,860 |
| 40–49 | £870 | £45,240 |
| 50–59 | £831 | £43,212 |
| 60 and over | £727 | £37,804 |
| All ages | £767 | £39,884 |
The weekly figures are rounded from the House of Commons Library reproduction of ONS ASHE 2025 data. The all-ages ONS weekly median was £766.60.
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Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Do not treat the final column as official annual pay. Multiplying £870 by 52 gives £45,240, but the official annual median for ages 40–49 is £44,244. That difference is expected because ASHE’s annual and weekly measures use different populations and methods.
Why the annual and weekly figures do not match
ONS warns that annual ASHE earnings are not directly comparable with weekly or hourly estimates.
- Annual pay covers employee jobs where the employee has been in the job for at least a year. It can include the effect of absence and pay received over the year, including relevant bonuses or other annual-pay components.
- Weekly headline pay generally focuses on employees whose pay was not affected by absence during the reference period.
- The two measures therefore do not describe precisely the same set of employee jobs, even when they use the same age bands and reference year.
That is why £39,039 is the official all-ages annual median for qualifying full-time jobs, while £767 a week annualises to almost £40,000. Neither figure is necessarily wrong; they answer slightly different statistical questions.
What does “average salary” mean?
There are three different concepts that are often confused:
- Median
- The middle value when earnings are ordered from lowest to highest. Half of employees earn more and half earn less. ONS generally prefers the median for describing a typical employee because a small number of very high earners do not pull it upward as much.
- Mean
- Total pay divided by the number of employee jobs. High salaries can raise the mean substantially above what most people earn.
- Mode
- The most common individual pay level. It is rarely useful for a national salary benchmark because pay is spread across many occupations and salaries.
So when someone asks for the “average UK salary by age”, the most useful answer is normally the median gross salary for employees in the same working pattern, rather than an unexplained mean.
At what age is UK pay highest?
In the 2025 ASHE data, the 40–49 age group had the highest median weekly pay among full-time employees, at £870. Median annual pay in the annual series was also highest for this group, at £44,244.
The pattern is broadly:
- Lower median pay among 16–17 and 18–21-year-olds.
- A substantial rise through the 20s and 30s.
- The highest median in the 40–49 group.
- Lower medians among the 50–59 and 60-and-over groups.
This is a cross-sectional comparison: it compares different people who belonged to different age groups in April 2025. It does not follow the same people throughout their careers. It therefore does not prove that an individual’s pay peaks between 40 and 49 or automatically falls after 50.
Why do the older age-group medians fall?
The lower median among older full-time employees may reflect several overlapping factors:
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- Some older employees move from full-time to part-time work.
- Some leave higher-paid management or professional roles, reduce their hours or move into less demanding positions.
- Some retire or begin a transition towards retirement.
- Age groups contain different mixes of occupations, industries and employment types.
- Cohort differences mean that people who entered the labour market at different times may have had different opportunities, qualifications and career paths.
- Career breaks and caring responsibilities can affect cumulative experience and progression.
The table is consistent with these possible explanations, but it cannot identify how much each factor contributes. It would be wrong to conclude that people necessarily become less productive or that every person’s salary declines with age.
Is £40,000 a good salary for your age?
There is no universal yes-or-no answer. A £40,000 salary is a useful example of why the comparison needs context:
- It is above the 2025 annual median for full-time employees aged 18–21 and 22–29.
- It is very close to the median for ages 30–39: £40,000 compared with £40,668.
- It is below the median for ages 40–49: £44,244.
- It is below the median for ages 50–59: £41,866.
- It is above the median for employees aged 60 and over: £36,467.
That tells you where £40,000 sits against national employee medians. It does not tell you whether the salary is comfortable, competitive for a particular profession or suitable for a particular household. Housing costs, commuting, dependants, debt, pension provision and working hours can matter more than the national age benchmark.
A fair way to benchmark your own salary
- Match your age band. Do not compare a 21-year-old with the 30–39 group simply because the job title is similar.
- Match working pattern. Compare a full-time salary with full-time data. If you work part time, use hourly pay or a comparable part-time benchmark.
- Use gross pay. Compare the salary before deductions with the gross figures in the tables.
- Check location. A national median may be a poor benchmark for London, the North East or a specific local labour market.
- Check occupation and sector. A salary is better assessed against people doing similar work than against everyone of the same age.
- Account for experience and seniority. Age is only a rough proxy. Qualifications, responsibility and years in the occupation may be more relevant.
- Compare the whole package. Include employer pension contributions, bonus, holiday entitlement, flexible working, health benefits, commuting costs and expected overtime.
A simple comparison is:
(Your gross salary ÷ median salary for the matching group − 1) × 100
For example, £40,000 is about 23.7% above the £32,347 median for full-time employees aged 22–29, but about 9.6% below the £44,244 median for those aged 40–49. These are benchmarking percentages, not a measure of financial wellbeing.
Full-time versus part-time pay
Part-time work materially changes the result. In April 2025, median weekly pay was £280 for part-time employees, compared with £766.60 for full-time employees, according to ONS.
A combined all-employee figure can therefore look much lower than a full-time salary benchmark because it includes both working patterns. It is not fair to compare a full-time annual salary with a mixed full-time-and-part-time annual median without saying so.
Use the measure that matches your question:
| Your comparison | Most useful measure |
|---|---|
| Comparing a conventional job offer | Full-time median annual gross pay |
| Comparing weekly pay packets | Full-time or part-time median weekly pay, matching your hours |
| Comparing jobs with different hours | Median hourly pay |
| Assessing what employees generally earn | All-employee pay, clearly labelled as including part-time work |
| Comparing minimum-wage exposure | Hourly pay |
Do not infer an annual salary from an hourly rate without stating the assumed weekly hours, number of paid weeks and treatment of holiday and overtime.
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Current overall pay context in 2026
The age-specific ASHE table is annual, so it lags the current year. More recent ONS labour-market data reported that in the three months to May 2026, average weekly earnings in Great Britain grew by 3.4% for regular pay and 4.3% for total pay year on year. ONS reported mean average weekly earnings of £699 for regular pay and £749 for total pay in May 2026.
Those figures provide current overall direction, but they are mean Average Weekly Earnings (AWE) measures for Great Britain, not median UK earnings by age. They should not replace the ASHE age table, and applying 4.3% mechanically to every age-group figure would not create an official 2026 salary-by-age estimate.
Minimum wage and younger age groups
Statutory minimum wage rates are age-dependent, so minimum-wage changes particularly affect the youngest age bands. The rates applying from 1 April 2026 are:
| Worker category | Minimum hourly rate |
|---|---|
| 21 and over | £12.71 |
| 18–20 | £10.85 |
| Under 18 | £8.00 |
| Eligible apprentices | £8.00 |
These current rates are not the rates used at the April 2025 ASHE reference date. The 2025 rates were £12.21 for workers aged 21 and over, £10.00 for ages 18–20, and £7.55 for workers aged 16–17 and eligible apprentices. The rates help explain why statutory pay floors influence younger groups, but an age-group median also includes people earning above the minimum.
Check the GOV.UK minimum wage rates page for eligibility rules and future changes.
How gender interacts with age
Age and gender are separate dimensions of pay comparison. Combining everyone into one age-only figure can hide important differences.
For full-time employees in April 2025, ONS reported a gender pay gap of 6.9% based on median hourly earnings. Its age breakdown was:
| Age group | Median hourly gender pay gap |
|---|---|
| 22–29 | 0.9% |
| 30–39 | 3.9% |
| 40–49 | 9.1% |
| 50–59 | 12.5% |
| 60 and over | 12.6% |
According to the ONS explanation, the gender pay gap is an overall difference in earnings across jobs. It is not a direct comparison of men and women doing identical work. The age pattern may reflect occupational sorting, seniority, part-time work, career breaks and different rates of progression into highly paid roles. It should not be attributed to age alone.
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National age medians are a starting point, not a local salary band. In April 2025, median full-time weekly pay was highest for employees living in London and lowest for those living in the North East, according to the House of Commons Library’s regional and age earnings analysis.
When using regional data, check whether it is:
- Workplace-based: assigned to the location of the job. This is usually the more relevant basis for an employer setting pay for a workplace.
- Residence-based: assigned to where the employee lives. This may be more relevant to household earnings and cost-of-living comparisons.
A commuter who lives outside London but works in London can appear differently under the two approaches. Do not mix workplace and residence figures in the same comparison, and do not use a national age median as the sole benchmark for a local job offer.
What the ASHE data includes—and excludes
Source and coverage: ASHE is based on employee jobs identified through PAYE. The 2025 achieved sample was approximately 174,000 employee records, around 1% of employees. ONS weights the estimates to UK population totals using region, occupation, age and sex classifications.
- It covers employees paid through PAYE.
- It excludes self-employed workers and employees who were not paid during the reference period.
- It treats multiple jobs as separate employee-job records, rather than necessarily counting one person only once.
- ONS defines full time as more than 30 paid hours a week, or at least 25 paid hours for teaching professionals. Part time means 30 or fewer hours, or fewer than 25 for teaching professionals.
- Some detailed age-by-sex, regional or occupational combinations can have substantial sampling variability. The accompanying ONS datasets provide sampling-variability information.
Consequently, this article refers to UK employees, not all UK workers. A freelancer, sole trader or other self-employed person may have earnings that are not represented in the tables.
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How to use the official data
For a more specific comparison, start with the ONS ASHE Table 6 age-group dataset. It allows comparisons by age, sex and working pattern, and includes the accompanying information needed to judge sampling variability.
For the 2025 provisional release, the direct download is the ONS Table 6 workbook. Use the annual, weekly or hourly measure that matches your comparison, and record the data year and whether the figures are based on full-time, part-time, workplace or residence data.
When will the age-by-salary figures be updated?
ASHE is released annually. The current detailed age-specific estimates relate to April 2025, even though more current overall earnings data is available through May 2026. The next annual ASHE release is expected in October 2026.
A reliable update should replace the 2025 age figures when the new ASHE release is published. Until then, the page should identify them as 2025 data rather than describing them as 2026 salaries.
Sources and data notes
- ONS: Employee earnings in the UK, 2025 — release, definitions, £39,039 annual median and methodology.
- ONS: ASHE Table 6, age group — official age, sex and working-pattern dataset.
- House of Commons Library: Average earnings by age and region — weekly age and regional comparisons.
- ONS: ASHE coverage and limitations — gross pay, PAYE, self-employed and multiple-job notes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the UK average salary by age include self-employed people?
No. ASHE is based on employee jobs identified through PAYE. It excludes self-employed workers and people who were not paid during the reference period. Multiple jobs can also appear as separate employee-job records.
Why does the annual median not equal weekly pay multiplied by 52?
ONS annual and weekly ASHE figures use different populations and methods. Annual pay generally requires the employee to have been in the job for at least a year and can be affected by absence, while weekly headline figures generally focus on pay not affected by absence during the reference period.
Is £40,000 a good salary for my age?
It depends on your working pattern, location, occupation, experience and household costs. Nationally, £40,000 is above the 2025 full-time median for ages 22–29, close to the 30–39 median, and below the 40–49 and 50–59 medians. It is a benchmark, not a universal measure of affordability or job quality.
The Bottom Line
Bottom line: The latest detailed age-specific figures show median gross full-time pay rising from £499 a week for 18–21-year-olds to a peak of £870 for 40–49-year-olds, before falling to £727 for employees aged 60 and over. Treat those figures as national benchmarks for different groups of employees—not as a guaranteed career path. For a fair salary comparison, match gross pay with your age band, working pattern, region, occupation and total benefits, and remember that the latest age data is for April 2025 rather than 2026.
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