UK annual full-time salary by percentile 2025

Between September 2022 and March 2023, the UK experienced seven months of double-digit inflation, which peaked at 11.1 percent in October 2022. During the most recent period of high inflation, core inflation peaked at 7.1 percent in May 2023, and while taking longer to fall than the overall figure, has generally been declining since then. When inflation peaked at 11.2 percent in October 2022, for example, core inflation stood at just 6.5 percent. As of December 2024, this was 3.2 percent, slightly higher than the overall CPI rate, but more aligned with the overall figure than it was in 2022 and 2023.

• The UK’s high inflation and cost of living crisis in 2022 had their origins in the COVID-19 pandemic.
• As of the most recent month, prices were rising fastest in the education sector, at 7.5percent, with prices increasing at the slowest rate in the clothing and footwear sector.
• Current forecasts suggest that while the debt is eventually expected to start declining, this is based on falling government deficits in the next five years.
• The gross domestic product of the United Kingdom in 2024 was around 2.78 trillion British pounds, an increase when compared to the previous year, when UK GDP amounted to about 2.75 trillion pounds.

GDP growth rates

When adjusted for inflation, regular pay without bonuses grew by 2.1 percent, with overall pay including bonus pay rising by 1.9 percent. In 2025, the average annual full-time earnings for the top ten percent of earners in the United Kingdom was more than 76,900 British pounds, compared with 23,990 for the bottom ten percent of earners. Although inflation fell in subsequent months, it wasn’t until July 2023 that inflation fell below double digits, and as of late 2024, the RPI rate was still above three percent. The UK’s global economic ranking will likely fall in the coming years, however, with the UK’s share of global GDP expected to fall from 2.16 percent in 2025 to 2.02 percent by 2029.

While the retail price index is still a popular method of calculating inflation, the consumer price index (CPI) is the current main measurement of inflation in the UK. Current forecasts suggest that while the debt is eventually expected to start declining, this is based on falling government deficits in the next five years. Although the UK government can continue to borrow money to finance its spending, the amount spent on debt interest has increased significantly in recent years.

Inflation rate for the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in the United Kingdom from January 2015 to November 2025

Among European nations, this meant that the UK currently has the second-largest economy in Europe, although the economy of France, Europe’s third-largest economy, is of a similar size. As of 2025, the UK had the sixth-largest economy in the world, behind the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and India. The gross domestic product of the United Kingdom in 2024 was around 2.78 trillion British pounds, an increase when compared to the previous year, when UK GDP amounted to about 2.75 trillion pounds. GVA growth in the UK 2025, by sector

For several years, the difference between average hourly earnings for men and women has been falling, with the UK’s gender pay gap dropping to 13.1 percent in 2024, down from 27.5 percent in 1997. As of February 2025, wages in the UK were growing by approximately 5.9 percent compared with the previous year, with this falling to 5.6 percent if bonus pay is included. As of this year, the average annual earnings for all full-time employees was over 39,000 pounds, up from 37,400 pounds in the previous year. Food and energy prices, which were already high, increased further in 2022. The UK’s high inflation and cost of living crisis in 2022 had their origins in the COVID-19 pandemic.

From 2021 onwards, prices in the UK rose rapidly, with the RPI inflation rate peaking at 14.2 percent in October 2022. After energy prices in 2023 fell relative to 2022, the overall inflation rate in the UK declined quite rapidly, with core inflation overtaking the overall rate in July 2023. Another way of measuring inflation is to strip out the volatility of energy and food prices and look at the underlying core inflation rate. The account requires an annual contract and will renew after one year to the regular list price. After peaking at 251.7 percent shortly after the end of the Second World War, government debt in the UK gradually fell, before a sharp increase in the late 2000s at the time of the global financial crisis.

The inflation rate for the Retail Price Index (RPI) in the United Kingdom was 3.8 percent in November 2025, down from 4.3 percent in the previous month. Hitting fiscal targets, such as reducing the national debt, will require a careful balancing of the books from the current government, and the possibility for either spending cuts casino not on GamStop or tax rises. In the financial services sector, for example, the gender pay gap was almost 30 percent, with professional, scientific and technical professions also having a relatively high gender pay gap rate of 20 percent.

Debt not expected to start falling until 2029/30

High inflation is one of the main factors behind the ongoing Cost of Living Crisis in the UK, which, despite subsiding somewhat in 2024, is still impacting households as of late 2025. Less than a year after implementing cuts to Winter Fuel, the government performed a U-Turn on the issue, and also held back on more significant cuts to welfare. This spending was financed by 1.14 trillion pounds of revenue raised, and almost 150 billion pounds of borrowing.

As of the most recent month, prices were rising fastest in the education sector, at 7.5percent, with prices increasing at the slowest rate in the clothing and footwear sector. Due to this long period of high inflation, UK consumer prices have increased by over 20 percent in the last three years. The UK inflation rate was 3.2 percent in November 2025, down from 3.6 percent in the previous month and the lowest rate of inflation since March 2025. As of December 2024, the CPI inflation rate stood at 2.5 percent, while the CPIH rate was 3.5 percent.

Although the economy has grown in subsequent quarters, GDP per capita is lower than it was in 2022, following two years of negative growth. After recovering from a huge fall in GDP in the second quarter of 2020, the UK economy has alternated between periods of contraction and low growth, with the UK even falling into a brief recession at the end of 2023. Despite growing by 1.1 percent in 2024 and 0.3 percent in 2023, the UK economy is not much larger than before the COVID-19 pandemic. The significant drop in GDP visible in 2020 was due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the smaller declines in 2008 and 2009 because of the global financial crisis of the late 2000s.

As a result of these factors, inflation surged across Europe and in other parts of the world but typically declined in 2023 and approached more usual levels by 2024. The war also disrupted global food markets, as both Russia and Ukraine are major exporters of cereal crops. Following the initial waves of the virus, global supply chains struggled to meet the renewed demand for goods and services.