Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their estimate of the number of workers in the UK who are paid more than £21,000 a year.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.

Letter from John Pullinger, National Statistician, to The Lord Green, dated 9 January 2019.

Dear Lord Green,

As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what the estimate of the number of workers in the UK is who are paid more than £21,000 a year (HL12559).

The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings [1] (ASHE), carried out in April each year is the most comprehensive source of earnings information in the United Kingdom. ASHE is used to produce estimates of the number of employee jobs, which are defined as those held by employees and not the self-employed. Please note that ASHE is based on a 1% sample of employee jobs taken from HM Revenue and Customs' Pay As You Earn (PAYE) records. Consequently, individuals with more than one job may appear in the sample more than once.

The estimate of employee jobs earning more than £21,000 per year in April 2018 [2] (the latest period for which ASHE estimates are available) in the UK is 12,826,000. This estimate includes apprentices and is based upon employees that have been in their current job for at least a year and are on an adult rate of pay. Yours sincerely, John Pullinger

[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/previousReleases

[2] 2018 data are provisional.