Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025

Introduction

This publication contains the latest estimates of gross median weekly earnings and the gender pay gap in Scotland and the UK, and employees earning less than the Real Living Wage in Scotland. All estimates 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. Data are sourced from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, first released on 23 October 2025 by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

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 (PAYE) system. The ONS have released three statistical bulletins covering Employee earnings in the UK, Gender pay gap in the UK,  Low and high pay in the UK.

The ASHE achieved sample for the UK was 174,000 in 2025.

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.

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.

An Official Statistics Publication for Scotland

These statistics are official statistics. Official statistics are statistics that are produced by crown bodies, those acting on behalf of crown bodies, or those specified in statutory orders, as defined in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.

Scottish Government statistics are regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.