What Is a Good Salary in the UK?

In the UK, there is no single figure that defines a good salary. The median full-time salary is £39,039 a year, according to the latest ONS figures, which cover April 2025, but what counts as good for one person can look very different for another. Three things affect a person’s definition of a good salary: where they live, who else their salary is supporting and what stage of their career they are in.

What counts as a good salary in the UK right now?

The Office for National Statistics’ Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) put UK median full-time pay at £39,039 in April 2025, up 4.3% on the year from £37,439. On a weekly basis, the same survey gives £766.60, up 5.3%. Both estimates are provisional. Either figure is a reasonable starting benchmark for a good UK salary: half of full-time employees earn more and half earn less. However, treating it as a universal cut-off ignores what actually determines whether a salary feels adequate.

Both figures also cover full-time work only, which matters. Median weekly pay for part-time employees was £280.00, so any benchmark that combines the two groups sits well below the full-time midpoint.

One further point before comparing any salary against these numbers: they are all gross pay, measured before income tax and National Insurance. What reaches a bank account is the net wage, and the gap between the two widens once earnings cross into a higher tax band. In 2026/27, the personal allowance is £12,570 and the 40% rate starts at £50,271.

Does a good salary depend on where you live in the UK?

Geographic location is the most obvious reason for differences in salaries. The 2025 ASHE data indicates that median full-time weekly pay for people working in London is £958.20, whereas in the North East it is £681.20. This kind of pay gap is what economists call a regional wage differential, shaped by wages and employment conditions that vary from place to place.

Median gross pay, full-time employees, April 2025

Weekly figures: ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025 (provisional), via Nomis labour market profiles for London and the North East.

*The annualised column is our own calculation, not an ONS figure. It is the weekly median multiplied by 52, rounded to the nearest pound, and it should be treated as indicative only. ASHE’s published UK annual median is £39,039, roughly £800 below the annualised equivalent of £39,863, because the annual and weekly estimates rest on slightly different populations and weekly pay does not scale neatly across a year. The annualised figures are useful for comparing regions with one another, but they are not a substitute for a published annual salary figure.

The first two columns repay a closer look. London pays more by workplace than by residence, because a large share of the capital’s best-paid jobs are done by people who live outside it and commute in. In the North East, the pattern is reversed.

Housing costs absorb much of that gap. As of August 2026, average monthly rent in London was £2,332, compared with £788 in the North East. Once housing costs are factored in, a London salary buys considerably less than the headline pay gap suggests. Employers often account for this by implementing pay scales based on location, which is why the same job is frequently advertised at a higher rate in the capital than elsewhere.

What is a good salary for a household with children?

For a single person, a salary of £39,039 may go further than it would for a household with dependants. Economists therefore use equivalence scales, which adjust household income for the number and ages of people it supports, to make fair comparisons between households of different sizes. On the modified OECD scale used in UK income statistics, the first adult counts as 0.67, a second adult as 0.33 and each child under 14 as 0.20, so the same income supports a progressively lower standard of living as a household grows. A dual-income household with two salaries of £39,039 is viewed differently from a single earner supporting three dependants.

In addition, Universal Credit taper rates mean that as a claimant’s earnings rise, their Universal Credit is withdrawn at a set rate rather than stopping abruptly. At the current 55% taper, every £1 earned above the work allowance (£427 a month where the award includes housing costs, or £710 where it does not) reduces the award by 55 pence, so a pay rise or extra hours worked translate into a smaller net gain than the headline figure suggests.

What is a good salary by age and career stage?

The career stage is an important consideration when assessing whether a salary is good, and economics has a framework for it. The life-cycle hypothesis, developed in the 1950s by Franco Modigliani and Richard Brumberg, holds that people base their spending and savings decisions on their anticipated lifetime earnings rather than their income in any given year, borrowing when young, saving through the higher-earning middle years and drawing down later. Pay itself tends to follow a similar arc, rising during the early career as experience accumulates and flattening later on.

This is why any single year’s salary says so little on its own. Both the 24-year-old graduate currently earning £28,000 and the 45-year-old manager earning £55,000 may be considered ‘on track’ for their respective career stages, because what matters is not any single year’s salary but the trajectory it sits on. Readers who want to see where their own pay sits against others of their age can find the full breakdown in ASHE Table 6, which splits median earnings into bands from 18 to 21 up to 60 and over.

So what is a good salary for you?

Take three people, each earning the UK median full-time salary of £39,039. The first is single, renting a one-bedroom flat in Newcastle, where rents are far below London levels; after housing costs and bills, there should be room each month for savings or discretionary spending. The second is a sole earner in Manchester with two children, and the same salary now has to stretch across childcare, a larger home, and everyday costs for a family of three; even with Universal Credit topping up the household, this earner will likely feel considerably more stretched than the first. The third shares a flat in London with two housemates to keep rent manageable, and while their income is identical to the other two, London’s higher cost of living, particularly transport, means the same salary buys noticeably less than it does in Newcastle.

Why inflation matters when judging a good salary

Furthermore, inflation should be taken into account when assessing changes in pay. Real earnings, meaning pay adjusted for price changes, increased by only 1.1% for full-time employees over the 12 months to April 2025, measured on median weekly pay against CPIH, and by 2.1% for part-time employees. Although an increase in salary may appear positive, it is worth comparing it with inflation before concluding that purchasing power has increased.