UK Wage Stagnation Tracker
Nominal pay packets keep rising. Real, inflation-adjusted pay tells a different story. This page plots both series since 2000 using ONS data and lets you convert a salary from any year into today's pounds.
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Frequently asked questions
Why is real wage growth so different from the headline pay figure I see in the news?
The headline number is nominal growth - the pound amount on the payslip. After inflation, your pay buys less per pound. Real wages strip out inflation by deflating with CPI, so they show whether you can buy more or less than you could last year. Since 2008 the UK has had multiple years where nominal pay rose but real pay fell.
What's the difference between regular pay and total pay?
Regular pay is base salary without bonuses. Total pay includes bonuses. We use regular pay (ONS series K54U) because it's a cleaner read on the underlying wage trend - large quarterly bonus payments in finance can distort total-pay growth, especially in March each year.
Why use 2010 as the base year?
It's a useful comparison point because the post-2008 financial crisis started bleeding into earnings around then, and the decade afterwards is the most-discussed period of UK wage stagnation. You can also see for yourself in the chart that the real-pay line has not consistently broken above its 2008 peak.
Where does the data come from?
Directly from the Office for National Statistics. Two free public time series: K54U (Average Weekly Earnings - regular pay) and D7BT (Consumer Prices Index 2015=100). The page refreshes daily.
Is my real wage the same as the average shown here?
Almost certainly not. This is the GB average across all employees in the headline ONS earnings dataset. Real pay for any one occupation, sector or region can move differently. Use the converter widget above to plug in your own salary and see what that specific number is worth in today's pounds.