ASHE 2025 top gainers and losers: which UK jobs got the biggest pay rises?

August 2026 update — Six months after the ONS published its 2025 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), the picture of who is winning and losing in the UK pay stakes is now clear.

The headline number: UK median gross annual pay for full-time employees hit £39,039 in April 2025, up from £37,439 a year earlier — a +4.3% year-on-year increase. After adjusting for CPIH inflation, that translates to real-terms pay growth of +1.1% — the first meaningful real gain since 2021.

But the national number hides some sharp divergences. Here is where the money actually moved.

The top gainers by occupation

Caring, leisure and other service occupations led the pack with a +7.1% weekly earnings increase year-on-year. That group includes care workers, ambulance staff and NHS support roles — occupations that saw wage-floor pressure combine with post-pandemic recruitment shortfalls.

Managers, directors and senior officials came in second with +6.7% year-on-year, reflecting continued demand for experienced leadership talent across financial services and tech.

For front-line healthcare workers, the ASHE gain is only part of the story — Agenda for Change added a further 3.6% uplift from April 2025 (see our UK nurse salary guide by region for 2026 for the region-by-region picture).

Industry leader: financial services

At the industry level, financial and insurance activities posted the strongest gross weekly pay growth of any UK sector at +10.3% year-on-year. That figure captures a mix of city bonuses, competition for senior underwriters and actuaries, and continued upward pressure on quantitative and data-science pay.

The same story shows up in demand for technical talent. Data professionals continue to command a premium in London and the South East — our UK data scientist salary guide by region for 2026 shows how far ahead the capital sits versus the rest of the country.

Who lagged

Not everyone shared in the gains. Elementary occupations and parts of the retail and hospitality workforce posted more modest growth, closer to the 4-5% band, reflecting a slower unwinding of pandemic-era discounting. Real-terms growth for those roles is still positive, but only just.

Regionally, Northern Ireland was the fastest-growing (+7.4% year-on-year), while the South East was slowest at just +2.9%. Wales came in at +4.2% — behind the UK average and behind Northern Ireland's runaway pace. The regional divergence is genuinely widening for the first time in several years.

What software engineers should know

Professional occupations as a group grew broadly in line with the national median. That means the technology sector's pay premium versus the average is holding, not widening — a shift from the sharper premiums seen in 2022-23.

For context on where software engineering pay actually sits region-by-region, see our UK software engineer salary guide by region for 2026.

Methodology and source

All figures in this article are drawn from the Office for National Statistics (2025) Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings: 2025 Provisional, published on 23 October 2025. Occupational and industry breakdowns are derived from the accompanying data tables. Real-terms comparisons use the ONS CPIH deflator.

Data is used under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Small samples are suppressed by the ONS to protect respondent anonymity, and any regional or occupational cell with fewer than 30 responses is excluded from headline comparisons.