Average Earnings

(asked on 11th May 2022) - View Source

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the value of the lowest earnings decile, as a percentage of average earnings, of (1) male, and (2) female, workers in each year since 2020.


Answered by
Lord True Portrait
Lord True
Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Privy Seal
This question was answered on 24th May 2022

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

A response to the noble Lord’s Parliamentary Question of 11 May is below and attached.

Dear Lord Field,

As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what is the value of the lowest earnings decile, as a percentage of average earnings, of (1) male, and (2) female, workers in each year since 2020 (HL141).

The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) [1], carried out in April each year, is the most comprehensive source of earnings information in the United Kingdom. ASHE is based on a 1% sample of employee jobs taken from HM Revenue and Customs' Pay As You Earn (PAYE) records. [2]

Table 1 shows the median gross weekly earnings for all, male, and female employees in the United Kingdom for 2020 and 2021 (the latest period for which ASHE estimates are available). [3] As with any survey, estimates from ASHE are subject to a margin of uncertainty. [4]

Yours sincerely,

Professor Sir Ian Diamond

Table 1: Median gross weekly earnings (£) for all, male, and female employees [5] in the United Kingdom, April 2020, April 2021

2020

10th Percentile

50th Percentile (Median)

Proportion (%)

All Employees

156.8

*

479.1

*

32.7

Male

230.9

*

568.4

*

40.6

Female

123.6

*

400.1

*

30.9

2021

10th Percentile

50th Percentile (Median)

Proportion (%)

All Employees

171.0

*

504.4

*

33.9

Male

251.3

*

594.1

*

42.3

Female

138.4

*

420.1

*

32.9

Source: Office for National Statistics, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings

(1) https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2021

(2) Consequently, individuals with more than one job may appear in the sample more than once.

(3) These estimates can be found at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/datasets/allemployeesashetable1

(4) The coefficient of variation (CV) indicates the quality of an estimate; the smaller the CV, the higher the quality. The true value is likely to lie within +/- twice the CV. For example, for an estimate of £200 with a CV of 5%, we would expect the true population average to be within the range £180 to £220. This is given by £200+/-({2*0.05}*200). The star system below is used in the table to indicate the degree of uncertainty.

Key

Coefficient of variation (CV) %

Statistical robustness

*

CV

Estimates are considered precise

**

CV > 5 and

Estimates are considered reasonably precise

***

CV > 10 and

Estimates are considered acceptable

x

CV > 20

Estimates are considered unreliable for practical purposes

(5) Employee jobs are defined as those held by employees and not the self-employed.

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