Latest results published 26 October 2022
The key points from the 'Employee earnings in NI 2022' show that:
- Median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees in April 2022 increased by 2.9% from £575 in 2021 to £592 in 2022. This year’s increase is at a similar rate to the trends seen pre-pandemic.
- UK weekly earnings increased by 5.0% to £640. NI had the joint lowest increase in earnings across the 12 UK regions over the year and now ranks third lowest of the regions, with weekly earnings £48 below the UK average in 202
- Real weekly earnings in NI showed the largest annual decrease on record (4.5%), following the largest annual increase on record to 2021 (7.0%). Real earnings are now 50p higher than they were in 2019 (0.1%). Real UK weekly earnings decreased over the year to a lesser extent (2.6%), and remain 1.1% below 2019 real earnings.
- Median annual earnings increased by 3.2% for all full-time employees in NI over the year to £30,000, but remained lower than the UK median of £33,000. The highest 10% of earners earned approximately £54,500 and above.
Publications
Historical data
- Headline statistics for Northern Ireland
- Industry, occupation, age, public/private sector and skill level
- NI geographies, by place of work and place of residence
- All tables in Open Document Spreadsheet (ODS) format
Earnings and Employees Study (EES) 2011
The Earnings and Employees Study (EES) 2011 links together variables from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) 2011 with variables from the Census of Population and Housing 2011, and Capital Value data from the Land and Property Services.
Access to the EES dataset is limited to researchers and research teams with accredited researcher status under the Digital Economy Act (DEA) and subject to approval by each of the data providers and the UK Statistics Authority Research Accreditation Panel (RAP).
Further information on the application process is available here.
Data Visualisation
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This year’s scrollytelling article takes a look at the change in real earnings over the last decade and how different age groups have been affected
- Scroll through our scrollytelling article to see how earnings have changed over the years and how furlough has impacted itClick here for our scrollytelling article
- Explanation of gender pay gap
- Why we use the median in earnings statistics
Pension Results
The provisional results from the pensions element of the Northern Ireland ASHE 2021 were published on 20th April 2022.
ASHE interactive maps
Click here for interactive earnings map

Geographically data refers to place of work.
NI ASHE Background Information
- Background to the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings
- Comparison of ASHE and PAYE RTI
- Guidance for completing the ASHE 2023 survey
- ONS quality and methodology for ASHE
Mailing list
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