New feature: Scroll through our scrollytelling article to see how earnings have changed in Northern Ireland over the last 20 years, and more specifically, how furlough has impacted earnings in the most recent 2 years.
Latest results published 26 October 2021
The key points from the 'Employee earnings in NI 2021' show that:
- Median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees (“weekly earnings”) in April 2021 were £575, an increase of 8.8% from £529 in 2020. This is the largest annual increase in weekly earnings on record, however it follows the largest annual decrease on record (-1.1% in the year to April 2020).
- Real weekly earnings increased by 7.0%. This is the largest increase in real earnings on record, following a decrease of 2.0% last year.
- In the UK, weekly earnings were £611, an increase of 4.3% from 2020 (£586). Real UK weekly earnings increased by 2.6% over the year.
- Median annual earnings increased by 1.7% for all full-time employees in NI over the year to £29,000, but remained lower than the UK median of £31,000. The highest 10% of earners in NI earned approximately £53,000 and above.
Publications
Detailed Results
- Headline statistics for Northern Ireland
- Industry, occupation, age, public/private sector and skill level
- NI geographies, by place of work and place of residence
- Low pay analysis
- 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.
HMRC PAYE RTI earnings
Experimental statistics from HMRC PAYE indicated that in April 2022:
- The number of employees receiving pay through HMRC PAYE in NI in April 2022 was 774,600, an increase of 0.4% over the month and 4.5% over the year to the highest level on record. This is the highest on record and the eleventh consecutive month that employee numbers have been above pre-COVID levels.
- Earnings from the HMRC PAYE indicated that NI employees had a median monthly pay of £1,945 in April 2022, an increase of £6 (0.3%) over the month and an increase of £129 (7.1%) over the year.
- Latest UK regional time series
Data Visualisation
- Scroll through our scrollytelling article to see how earnings have changed and how furlough has impacted it
Click 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 2022 survey
- ONS quality and methodology for ASHE
Mailing list
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