# Average salaries: know your numbers

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/07/17/average-salaries-know-your-numbers/
- Published: 2009-07-17T11:13:23+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

Just what is a big salary? That is the title of an article in the [BBC Magazine](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/default.stm)
published following London Mayor Boris Johnson’s reported comment that being paid
£250,000 a year was “chicken-feed”.

 

Being aware of what constitutes a big salary and indeed what constitutes an average
salary is useful for quite a few fundraisers and prospect researchers, and the article
offers some useful statistics from the [Office for National Statistics’ Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE)](http://www.ons.gov.uk/about/surveys/a-z-of-surveys/annual-survey-of-hours-and-earnings--ashe-/index.html).

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The median salary for someone employed (full-time or part-time) in the UK in terms
of their gross annual earnings is £20,801. This rises to £25,123 for only full-time
employees.

 

How much do you have to be earning to be in the top 25% in the UK? You’d need a 
gross annual salary of £31,759.

 

The top 10%? £44,881.

 

The top 5%? £58,917.

 

The top 1%? £118,027.

 

If you are earning £150,000 or more, at which point you start paying 50% income 
tax, you are in the top 0.6% of salaried people.

 

However, ASHE covers only people on PAYE. It does not cover self-employed people
so the above figures do not tell the whole story.

 

And of course, there are a fair few people on higher than average salaries that 
will tell you that it doesn’t feel like it. But, there you have the figures.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8151355.stm

 

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