UK EARNINGS · AGE GROUPS
Salary by age: where does your pay sit?
Compare your annual gross earnings with the median and published salary bands for your age group. Explore six UK age groups using ONS 2025 provisional data, not an estimate of what you should earn.
ONS ASHE 2025
Provisional data
Your age-group comparison
ONS · 2025AGE 30–39 · UK FULL-TIME EMPLOYEE JOBS
60th–70th percentile£50,000 annual gross pay, before tax and pension deductions.
The shaded band lies between usable published thresholds. It is not an exact personal percentile. Equality starts the next band.
- Age-group median
- £40,668
- Your pay against this median
- 22.9% above the median
- Lower published threshold
- £45,28460th percentile · CV 0.6%
- Upper published threshold
- £50,79770th percentile · CV 0.8%
SIX AGE GROUPS · SAME MEASURE
Median annual earnings
Compare the middle of each group, not a forecast of your future pay. Select a row to change your comparison group.
Bars start at zero. CV is the coefficient of variation, a measure of sampling uncertainty. The selected group is labelled as well as highlighted.
ONS ASHE Table 6 · 2025 provisional · Tax year ending 5 April 2025. Full-time employee jobs held for more than a year, all sexes. Not all UK residents, household income or wealth.
Your input changed. Select “Compare my earnings” to update the result.
THE NUMBERS BEHIND THE COMPARISON
UK earnings by age group
These are published estimates of annual gross pay, not monthly take-home amounts. The median is the middle of a group. The 90th percentile is the threshold for its highest-earning 10%, not the average pay of that 10%.
Every displayed number has a published coefficient of variation (CV). A lower CV means less sampling uncertainty relative to the estimate. The calculator also uses the intervening published thresholds; it does not invent positions between them.
| Age group | 25th percentile | Median · 50th | 75th percentile | 90th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18–21 | £19,105CV 1.8% | £23,596CV 1.2% | £27,571CV 1.9% | £32,939CV 4.6% |
| 22–29 | £26,429CV 0.4% | £32,347CV 0.6% | £40,850CV 1% | £52,197CV 2.2% |
| 30–39 | £30,717CV 0.4% | £40,668CV 0.6% | £54,620CV 0.8% | £75,041CV 2.3% |
| 40–49 | £31,858CV 0.6% | £44,244CV 0.7% | £60,919CV 0.9% | £88,658CV 2.7% |
| 50–59 | £30,283CV 0.4% | £41,866CV 0.6% | £58,409CV 1% | £85,226CV 2.4% |
| 60+ | £27,944CV 0.6% | £36,467CV 0.9% | £50,572CV 1.7% | £74,677CV 4.2% |
The underlying table contains employee jobs, not a count of unique people. It covers full-time jobs on adult rates of pay held for more than a year. The 16–17 group is excluded because it includes employees not on adult rates and many percentile estimates are suppressed.
READ THE RESULT CORRECTLY
A benchmark, not a career timetable
The chart is a snapshot of different groups of employee jobs. It does not follow the same people through their careers, so a higher median in one group is not a prediction of your next pay rise.
For a UK-wide or workplace-region comparison, use the salary percentile calculator. For money after deductions, use the take-home pay calculator.
Is this the average salary for my age?
We show the median rather than the arithmetic mean. The mean adds every salary and divides by the number of jobs; a small number of very high earnings can pull it upwards. The median is the midpoint, with half of employee jobs on either side. Both describe a group, not the salary that any individual should receive.
What does the percentile band mean?
A result between the 60th and 70th percentiles means your entry sits between those two published pay thresholds. We do not interpolate an exact rank such as “66.3%”. At the 90th-percentile threshold or above, this age comparison can show the top 10% band, but it cannot establish an age-specific top 1%.
Why is there no age-and-region filter?
This comparison uses the age breakdown in ONS ASHE Table 6. It does not combine the age figures with unrelated regional averages to create a ranking that the source does not publish. Occupation, experience, workplace region, cost of living and hours within full-time work are not held constant.
How recent are these figures?
The 2025 provisional release was published on 23 October 2025, but these annual earnings refer to the tax year ending 5 April 2025. They are not live salaries or a forecast for 2026/27. Provisional estimates can be revised.
How do you handle uncertain or missing estimates?
A threshold is used only if both its earnings estimate and CV are available and its CV is no more than 20%. Missing or suppressed values are never treated as zero. All 66 thresholds retained for the six age groups here have CVs of 5% or less. Even these are survey estimates, not exact population counts.
Are my pay and age saved?
No. This comparison runs in your browser. Your pay and selected age group are not added to the URL, saved as a scenario or sent to a calculation service. See our privacy and cookie information for the separate optional website analytics.
TRACEABLE PUBLIC DATA
Sources & verification
PayFigured is an independent tool, not an ONS service. The page reproduces selected official estimates and makes the comparison in your browser. A source label is not an endorsement.
Report a data or calculation error using a fictional example, without sending your payslip or personal financial information.
- ONS ASHE Table 6: earnings and hours worked, age group, 2025 provisional.
- Download the ONS 2025 provisional Table 6 workbooks. Annual gross pay comes from Table 6.7a; CVs come from 6.7b. Both use the Full-Time worksheet, all-sex rows for the six age groups.
- PayFigured methodology and limitations.
- Source: Office for National Statistics, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2025 provisional. Reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Source figures and CVs checked 18 October 2026. The age-group table and chart are earnings benchmarks, not financial advice or a recommended salary.
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