Labour Stats: How much we work, and how much we earn

Two key pieces of information most of us care about when it comes to our jobs. How much will we earn? And how many hours will we work? And... how does this compare to other people? Here, we've carved out stats related to these two key areas of interest for UK workers. See the trends and how you compare.

• Average UK earnings
• Average hours worked

Average UK earnings

The average amount earned per week was £666 in November 2023, an increase of 5% from a year earlier. Of this, around £40 (or around £2,000 per year) is from bonuses.

Private sector employees earn a touch more, at £671 per week, while public sector staff earn an average of £648.

Unsurprisingly, the highest-paying sector is 'Finance and Business Services', where people earn an average of £901 weekly (£46,800 annually). Compare this to 'Wholesaling, retailing, hotels & restaurants', where people earn less than half this, or £440 a week (£22,900 a year).

We all know that inflation is taking a bite out of our finances. Has pay kept up? Let's take a look at the pay trends from the past 10 years to see what's happening.

On an annual basis, we're earning around £10,000 more a year now (£34,622 vs £24,319 ten years ago).

So the good news it, yes, we are earning more now—about 42% more than we earned 10 years ago. But is this enough? How does it compare to inflation? Due to inflation (specifically, using the RPI All Items Index), the price of things has increased by 49% over the same time period (the past 10 years). Hrrmmm. It's no surprise we're feeling the pinch. Wages haven't risen as much as our living costs.

Here's all of the weekly wage data going back 10 years, if you'd like to look at the details:

Average hours worked

So if we're earning less, are we working less?

Mostly.

On average across all workers, we're clocking 31.6 hours of work a week now (July 2023). This is 30 minutes less a week (1.5% less) compared to 10 years ago.

It's full time workers that are really dragging this figure down—they're working 36.4 hours a week now, down 1.2 hours from 10 years ago (3.3% less).

But people are clocking more hours in part-time work or second jobs. Specifically, just under a half hour more each week for part-time work, and an extra 5 minutes a week (not much, really) in second jobs.

So, we're working a touch less overall than we were 10 years ago, but people's pay has dropped more than you'd expect for the decrease in hours worked (when you take inflation into account)...

Here's the detailed data for hours worked in Great Britain going back 10 years:

Recap

In short, we're working a little less. We're earning a lot more—42% more than we earned 10 years ago. But, our earnings haven't kept up with inflation. The Retail Price Index is up 49% over the past 10 years, meaning our costs (food, housing, etc.) have risen in cost more than our earnings have risen:

Over the past 10 years...

Thoughts? Please leave a comment below.