Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2018

Date published: 25 October 2018

The ASHE is a UK survey offering data on earnings by gender, work patterns, industry, occupation, and public vs. private sector pay comparisons.

Key points

• Median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees (“weekly earnings”) in April 2018 were £521, an increase of 4.2% from £500 in 2017. This is the largest increase recorded since 2015 (5.4%).
• When adjusted for inflation, weekly earnings increased by 2.0%, following a decrease in real earnings last year.
• In the UK, weekly earnings were £569, an increase of 3.5% from 2017 (£550). This is the largest increase in 10 years. When adjusted for inflation, UK weekly earnings increased by 1.2%, which, similar to NI, followed a decrease in real earnings last year.
• Northern Ireland experienced, along with West Midlands, the largest increase (4.2%) in weekly earnings of the 12 UK regions, which all saw an increase over the year, and improved from third lowest earning region last year to fifth lowest in April 2018.
• Private sector weekly earnings increased by 4.5% over the year, while public sector weekly earnings decreased by 0.3%. Private sector weekly earnings (£465) were 25% lower than public sector earnings (£621).
• In part due to the continued impact of the National Living Wage, those in the lowest 10% of the full-time weekly earnings distribution experienced a larger increase (4.4%) than those in the highest 10% (1.9%).
• Median hourly earnings for full-time females (£12.94) were 3.5% greater than those for full-time males (£12.50). This is the largest difference in favour of females since females first experienced higher average hourly rates than men in NI in 2010.
• NI remains the only region in the UK where full-time females earn more per hour on average than full-time males. In the UK as a whole full-time females earned 8.6% less than full-time males per hour.
• Median annual earnings increased by 4.1% for all full-time employees in NI over the year to £27,006, but remained lower than the UK median of £29,574. The highest 10% of earners earned above £48,941.
• The total weekly hours worked by full-time employees in NI increased by 0.2 hours over the year to 38.3 hours, and are now 0.8 hours higher than the UK.
• Full publication.