Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025

Data and Methodology

About the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings data

The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) is the official source of UK earnings estimates.  ASHE data is published annually and is based on a 1% sample of the Pay As You Earn system (PAYE).

The ASHE achieved sample for the UK was 174,000 in 2025. The ASHE sample size was reduced during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic because of the challenges to data collection, from around 180,000 each year to less than 150,000 in 2020, 2021 and 2022. The ASHE sample size started recovering in 2023 and is now at its highest since 2019.

All estimates published by ONS on the 23 October 2025 for 2025 are provisional and relate to the pay period that includes 30 April 2025. Estimates for 2024 have been revised and relate to the pay period that includes 17 April 2024.

Estimates for 2020 and 2021 include furloughed employees and are based on actual payments made to the employee from company payrolls and the hours on which this pay was calculated, which in the case of furloughed employees are their usual hours. Over the coronavirus pandemic period, earnings estimates were affected by changes in the composition of the workforce and the impact of Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), making interpretation difficult. In July 2021, ONS published a blog: How COVID-19 has impacted the Average Weekly Earnings data, which explains the complexities of interpreting earnings data during the Covid-19 period in relation to compositional and base effects which are likely to affect growth rates. In addition, data for 2020 and 2021 were subject to more uncertainty due to data collection disruption and lower response rates and should be treated with caution. Therefore, ONS encourage users to focus on long-term trends rather than year on year changes over these periods.

From 2021, ONS have moved from Standard Occupation Classifications (SOC) 2010 to SOC 2020 for their occupation coding. This means earnings estimates for April 2021 based on SOC 2020 represent a break in the ASHE time series. Therefore, estimates pre- and post-2021 are not directly comparable.

ASHE data are weighted to UK population totals from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) based on classes defined by region, occupation, age and sex.

ONS have implemented improvements to the methods used for processing data returns to help address differences between ASHE and other sources of earnings data. Due to these methodological changes, data for 2023 onwards might not be directly comparable to data for 2022 and earlier years. For further details on the methodological changes implemented by ONS, please see the data sources and quality section of the ONS publication.

Quality and methodology of Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings Data

Further information on the quality and methodology of the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings data used within this publication are included within the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings quality and methodology information report.

ONS have also released a blog post on the improvements they have and are making to ASHE.

How to access background or source data

Results are provided based on the provisional 2025 and revised 2024 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) data released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on 23 October 2025.

Time series data for hourly, weekly and annual earnings from ASHE are available on Nomis.

Related Links

Scottish Government Labour Market Statistics publications

ONS Employee earnings in the UK publication

ONS Gender pay gap in the UK publication

ONS Low and high pay in the UK publication

ONS Comparison of labour market data sources