Pay Levels Rising

13th April 2022

A report from the Office of National Statistics shows the rise in pay levels.

Median monthly pay
Early estimates for March 2022 indicate that median monthly pay was £2,067, an increase of 6.0% compared with the same period of the previous year.

Following a general trend of increasing pay growth between mid-2015 and mid-2018, pay growth tended to fluctuate around 3.6%, until 2020 when pay growth became negative. This coincided with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, and related economic and policy responses. Since June 2020, median pay growth has been positive and is now above pre-coronavirus (February 2020) levels.

The relatively high level of pay growth between June and December 2020 is partially explained by lower levels of people entering the labour market than usual during that period, as explored in the August 2020 bulletin and September 2020 bulletin.

While the general trend of pay growth is dominated by those continually employed, the mean pay of people entering the labour market (referred to as inflows) tends to be around 40% lower than mean pay for those continually employed. This means inflows into payrolled employment tend to bring down average pay and average pay growth. As inflows were relatively low between June 2020 and December 2020, this reduced the downward pressure on pay growth, which in turn increased median pay growth.

The high level of pay growth in April 2021 is attributed to the relatively high median pay in April 2021, combined with the suppressed level of median pay in April 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Read the full report at https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/earningsandemploymentfrompayasyouearnrealtimeinformationuk/april2022