Is £30,000 a Good Salary in the UK? The ONS Percentile Answer for 2026

If you have just been offered £30,000 — or you are already there and wondering whether to push for more — you are almost certainly asking some version of the same question: is £30,000 a good salary in the UK in 2026? The honest answer is that £30,000 is a below-median full-time UK salary, and how "good" it actually feels depends almost entirely on where you live.

This guide gives you the straight percentile answer first, then walks through the take-home maths, what £30,000 actually buys in 2026, how to read the figure against your career stage, and the realistic playbook for moving from £30,000 to £40,000 over the next 12 to 24 months. Every number is anchored to official ONS data — see the methodology note at the foot of the page.

The percentile answer: £30,000 nationally and across 12 UK regions

Here is the headline. Across all full-time UK employees, £30,000 sits at roughly the 31st percentile of full-time UK employees — meaning about 69% of full-time workers earn more than you, and 31% earn the same or less. That is well below the UK full-time median of around £39,039. This is a linear interpolation of £30,000 between the published decile and quartile points of ASHE 2025 Table 1.1a, not a value ONS publishes directly — see the methodology note at the foot of the page.

But "the UK" is not one labour market. The picture changes sharply by region.

Region	Median full-time salary	£30,000 percentile	"Good salary" verdict
London	£47,455	28th	Below average
South East	£39,910	38th	Below average
East of England	£37,855	41st	Around average
Scotland	£37,580	42nd	Around average
South West	£35,920	45th	Around average
North West	£35,640	45th	Around average
West Midlands	£35,330	46th	Around average
East Midlands	£34,990	47th	Around average
Yorkshire and the Humber	£34,400	48th	Around average
Wales	£33,670	49th	Around average
Northern Ireland	£33,290	50th	Right at the median
North East	£33,210	50th	Right at the median

A few things jump out:

• In London, £30,000 puts you in the bottom third of full-time earners. The London median is more than 50% higher than yours.
• In the North East and Northern Ireland, £30,000 lands you right at the regional median. Half your peers earn less, half earn more — you are squarely middle-of-the-pack.
• In every region outside London and the South East, £30,000 is within roughly £5,000 of the median. That is the most important framing: outside the South-East corner, £30,000 is an entirely ordinary full-time salary, not a low one.

For the underlying national picture and how the median has moved over the past three years, see our average UK salary 2026 breakdown.

After tax and NI: what £30,000 actually pays you each month

The gross figure is the one in your offer letter. What you spend is the net figure. Using the 2025/26 tax bands — the ones that apply through April 2026 — here is what £30,000 looks like in your bank account.

Line	Annual	Monthly
Gross salary	£30,000.00	£2,500.00
Personal allowance	−£12,570.00	—
Income tax (20% basic rate on £17,430)	−£3,486.00	−£290.50
Employee National Insurance (8% on earnings above £12,570)	−£1,394.40	−£116.20
Net take-home pay	£25,119.60	£2,093.30

A few practical notes:

• This assumes the standard tax code (1257L), no student loan, no workplace pension contributions, and no other deductions. A typical 5% auto-enrolment pension contribution would shave roughly £125/month off your take-home — but adds the same amount, plus the employer match, to your retirement pot.
• Student loan repayments depend on your plan. On Plan 5 (post-2023 starters, threshold £25,000), £30,000 triggers about £37/month in repayments. On Plan 2 (most 2012–2023 graduates, threshold £28,470), it is about £11/month. On Plan 1, the threshold is higher than £30,000 so no repayments are due.
• The 8% employee NI rate reflects the cut introduced by the Spring Budget; the band of earnings it applies to (£12,570 to £50,270) is unchanged for 2025/26.

So in round terms: roughly £2,090 a month into your account, before pension or student loan. That is the figure to budget against.

What £30,000 actually buys you in 2026: housing, transport, food

The take-home number is meaningful only against living costs, and those vary across the UK by even more than salaries do.

London

Living comfortably in London on £30,000 alone is genuinely difficult. The Trust for London Minimum Income Standard — the most respected independent benchmark for what households need in the capital — sets the minimum acceptable income for a single person in London at around £33,000 before tax, higher than £30,000. That is the income required for what the standard calls "a dignified life and full participation in society" (not luxury — covering modest rent, food, transport, and a small amount for social inclusion).

In practice, on £30,000 in London this usually means:

• Houseshare, not solo flat. A room in a shared house costs roughly £900–£1,200/month in most outer-zone boroughs, vs. £1,500–£2,000 for a one-bed flat.
• Zone 1–3 monthly travelcard: about £200/month.
• No realistic monthly savings after rent, bills, transport, and food, unless you cut hard on social spend.

For a comprehensive breakdown of the pay premium and cost pressure in the capital, see our London salary guide.

Outside London

In most of the rest of the UK, £30,000 supports a meaningfully more comfortable lifestyle:

• Rent a one-bed flat solo in most northern, midlands, Welsh, Scottish, and Northern Irish cities for £600–£900/month (less in smaller towns).
• Run a modest car, including fuel, insurance, tax, and a small repair buffer, for roughly £250–£350/month.
• Save £150–£250/month after a reasonable lifestyle, if you avoid lifestyle creep and lean on workplace pension matching.

The same £30,000 that buys a houseshare and a tight monthly budget in London buys a self-contained flat plus modest savings in Newcastle, Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow, Sheffield, or Hull.

A useful mental model

A working rule of thumb: in any UK region, your salary feels "comfortable" once you cross roughly 120% of that region's median. On £30,000, you are at:

• 63% of the London median — well below the comfort threshold.
• 75% of the South East median — within reach but stretched.
• 85–90% of the median in every other region — within striking distance of comfort, and over it in the cheapest regions.

What £30,000 means at your career stage

Whether £30,000 is a "good" salary depends as much on when you are earning it as where.

Entry-level (first job out of university, apprenticeship, or vocational route)

£30,000 is a strong starter salary in 2026 for most graduates outside London. The current UK median for full-time workers aged 22–29 is around £31,000, so a first or second job paying £30,000 sits roughly with peers. Common entry-level and early-career roles in this band include:

• A teaching assistant progressing into higher-level or specialist support work
• A software developer at the junior grade outside London
• A retail supervisor at multi-site or flagship stores
• NHS Band 4 administrative and healthcare-support roles
• Graduate trainee roles in marketing, ops, finance support, and HR outside the South East

If you are 22–25 and on £30,000, you are doing well. The slope from here is what matters more than the starting number.

Mid-career (5–10 years' experience)

If you have 5–10 years of experience and you are still on £30,000, the data suggests you are underpaid for your stage in most occupations and regions. The 30–39 age band has a UK full-time median above £40,000. There are honourable exceptions — many caring, teaching-assistant, and support roles plateau in this band for structural reasons — but in commercial roles, this is the signal to actively benchmark.

For most occupations, look up the median pay for your specific role and region on the relevant role page, not just the general UK average. The gap between role-and-region median and your current pay is your negotiation ammunition.

Senior (10+ years, or supervisory/specialist track)

A £30,000 senior or specialist salary is a clear underpayment signal in almost any region and almost any sector — including most public-sector tracks, where Band 5 and Band 6 NHS roles, teaching pay scales, and police pay bands all sit well above £30,000 after a few years' tenure. The exception is a small number of fully-employed pay caps (some museum, library, and parts of the charity sector) where this can persist for structural reasons. If that describes you, £30,000 at senior level is often a considered lifestyle or vocation choice — the data is not telling you your career has failed, it is telling you a specific set of sectors pay below what a purely market-priced version of the same seniority would earn.

How to push from £30,000 to £40,000 in 12–24 months

The fastest moves from £30,000 toward £40,000 generally come from three plays:

1. Move employer, not role. ONS Labour Force Survey data has shown for several years that job-changers see meaningfully larger annual pay growth than job-stayers — typically several percentage points more. If you have been in the same role for 18 months or more and are on £30,000, the highest-leverage step is testing the external market.
2. Apply for the role one level above yours, even if you do not match every requirement. Hiring research consistently finds that internal promotions and external "next-level" hires close most of the gap. Recruiters expect candidates to apply on 60–70% of the criteria.
3. Negotiate the offer. A single well-prepared counter-offer — anchored to the regional and role median data — typically returns 3–8% above the initial offer. On a £35,000 offer, that is £1,000–£2,800/year, for one conversation.

If you want to know what "the next rung" actually pays before you start any of this, the natural next reads in this series are the companion pieces on £40,000 and £50,000 — both using the same percentile-led structure with the new anchor figure. Coming soon.

So — is £30,000 a good salary in the UK in 2026?

It is a below-median full-time salary nationally, a comfortable middle-of-the-pack salary in most of the UK, and a stretched one in London and the South East. Whether that counts as "good" depends on three things: your region, your career stage, and where you intend to be in two years.

If you are early-career outside the South East corner, £30,000 in 2026 is a perfectly respectable start and the trajectory matters more than the number. If you have a decade of experience on this salary, the data is telling you to benchmark hard against your role-and-region median, then act.

For a broader lens on how the UK pay picture is shaped, our what is a good salary in the UK guide walks through age, sector, and household benchmarks — a useful sense-check alongside the percentile answer above.

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Methodology and sources

Salary data. UK national and regional median full-time earnings come from the Office for National Statistics Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) covering April 2025 pay, published November 2025. The UK-wide 31st-percentile position for £30,000 is a linear interpolation between the published decile and quartile points of Table 1.1a (full-time employees, annual gross pay), not a percentile ONS publishes directly. Regional medians and regional percentile positions come from Table 14.7a (ITL1 regions, full-time employees, annual gross pay), applying the same interpolation approach against each region's own published deciles and quartiles.

Tax, National Insurance, and student loan. Figures use HMRC's 2025/26 personal allowance (£12,570), basic-rate income tax (20% on earnings £12,571–£50,270), and employee National Insurance (8% on earnings £12,571–£50,270). Student loan thresholds reflect the published 2025/26 rates for Plans 1, 2, and 5.

Cost of living. The London minimum-income figure is drawn from the Trust for London Minimum Income Standard (2026 update), which tracks what UK households need for a socially acceptable standard of living, based on Loughborough University's Centre for Research in Social Policy methodology.

What we don't do. Where an ONS regional or role median is suppressed for disclosure reasons, we say so — we never substitute £0, "0", or an estimated stand-in. Regional percentile positions on this page are interpolated from published percentile points, not sub-sampled from unpublished data.

Next ASHE release lands and a figure changes? We will update this piece.