Among occupations with at least 10,000 full-time jobs, the best-paid is specialist medical practitioners, with a median full-time salary of £108,281 a year in ONS’s 2026 survey of earnings. The lowest-paid is teaching assistants, at £22,018. The median for all full-time employees is £40,911.
The rankings below cover 283 occupations: those for which ONS publishes a reliable median and estimates at least 10,000 full-time jobs. To look up any job, including smaller ones, use the full table of pay by job.
The 25 highest paying jobs
| # | Occupation (SOC code) | Median full-time pay | Middle half earn | Full-time jobs (indicative) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Specialist medical practitioners (2212) | £108,281 | £74,081 to £145,061 | about 171,000 |
| 2 | Information technology directors (1137) | £98,127 | £73,235 to £138,192 | about 60,000 |
| 3 | Marketing, sales and advertising directors (1132) | £96,393 | £68,288 to £140,018 | about 193,000 |
| 4 | Chief executives and senior officials (1111) | £95,516 | £54,046 to £163,111 | about 145,000 |
| 5 | Directors in consultancy services (1258) | £87,192 | not published | about 10,000 |
| 6 | Functional managers and directors n.e.c. (1139) | £84,439 | £57,795 to £119,577 | about 119,000 |
| 7 | Financial managers and directors (1131) | £80,000 | £52,043 to £133,539 | about 343,000 |
| 8 | Public relations and communications directors (1133) | £79,560 | not published | about 14,000 |
| 9 | Train and tram drivers (8231) | £74,376 | £67,374 to £82,880 | about 20,000 |
| 10 | Head teachers and principals (2321) | £73,110 | £61,538 to £88,719 | about 49,000 |
| 11 | Senior police officers (1162) | £70,573 | not published | about 15,000 |
| 12 | Production managers and directors in mining and energy (1123) | £64,765 | not published | about 10,000 |
| 13 | IT business analysts, architects and systems designers (2133) | £64,326 | £47,285 to £86,010 | about 184,000 |
| 14 | Health services and public health managers and directors (1171) | £63,574 | £49,265 to £87,288 | about 59,000 |
| 15 | Electrical engineers (2123) | £63,136 | £47,732 to £83,995 | about 33,000 |
| 16 | Business and financial project management professionals (2440) | £63,046 | £48,092 to £83,712 | about 283,000 |
| 17 | Managers and directors in the creative industries (1255) | £61,634 | not published | about 21,000 |
| 18 | Human resource managers and directors (1136) | £61,445 | £46,053 to £86,079 | about 157,000 |
| 19 | Financial and accounting technicians (3533) | £60,755 | £36,537 to £84,770 | about 32,000 |
| 20 | Actuaries, economists and statisticians (2433) | £60,263 | £45,004 to £81,467 | about 50,000 |
| 21 | Production managers and directors in construction (1122) | £59,994 | £44,710 to £76,109 | about 87,000 |
| 22 | Programmers and software development professionals (2134) | £59,863 | £43,509 to £82,149 | about 362,000 |
| 23 | Production managers and directors in manufacturing (1121) | £59,695 | £43,013 to £87,192 | about 351,000 |
| 24 | IT project managers (2131) | £59,647 | £46,166 to £73,690 | about 31,000 |
| 25 | Generalist medical practitioners (2211) | £59,325 | £46,541 to £73,421 | about 48,000 |
In ONS’s 2026 figures, more than half of the top 25 are managers and directors (SOC major group 1), from chief executives to financial and IT directors. Outside management, the best paid include specialist doctors, train and tram drivers, head teachers, IT architects and electrical engineers. Pay within each job varies a lot, so read the middle-half column alongside the median: a quarter of employees in each job earn more than its upper figure, where ONS publishes one.
The 25 lowest paying jobs
| # | Occupation (SOC code) | Median full-time pay | Middle half earn | Full-time jobs (indicative) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Teaching assistants (6112) | £22,018 | £19,592 to £25,721 | about 101,000 |
| 2 | Educational support assistants (6113) | £22,699 | £19,839 to £26,807 | about 54,000 |
| 3 | Bar staff (9265) | £23,676 | £19,220 to £29,247 | about 18,000 |
| 4 | Waiters and waitresses (9264) | £24,647 | £19,955 to £29,241 | about 39,000 |
| 5 | Kitchen and catering assistants (9263) | £24,950 | £20,311 to £29,285 | about 86,000 |
| 6 | Retail cashiers and check-out operators (7112) | £25,013 | £21,976 to £28,541 | about 23,000 |
| 7 | Early education and childcare practitioners (3232) | £25,060 | £21,297 to £28,121 | about 68,000 |
| 8 | Pharmacy and optical dispensing assistants (7114) | £25,380 | £23,418 to £27,331 | about 25,000 |
| 9 | Hairdressers and barbers (6221) | £25,491 | £19,936 to £29,495 | about 14,000 |
| 10 | Early education and childcare assistants (6111) | £25,558 | £22,062 to £29,322 | about 44,000 |
| 11 | Cleaners and domestics (9223) | £25,732 | £22,766 to £29,979 | about 84,000 |
| 12 | Receptionists (4216) | £25,865 | £23,229 to £30,077 | about 72,000 |
| 13 | Higher level teaching assistants (3231) | £26,026 | £22,598 to £29,951 | about 20,000 |
| 14 | Sales and retail assistants (7111) | £26,124 | £23,066 to £30,842 | about 214,000 |
| 15 | Cooks (5435) | £26,140 | £22,770 to £31,156 | about 19,000 |
| 16 | Housekeepers and related occupations (6231) | £26,177 | £23,702 to £29,534 | about 17,000 |
| 17 | Dental nurses (6133) | £26,923 | £23,273 to £30,624 | about 30,000 |
| 18 | Animal care services occupations n.e.c. (6129) | £26,939 | £24,727 to £30,227 | about 17,000 |
| 19 | Bar and catering supervisors (9261) | £26,998 | £24,152 to £31,323 | about 30,000 |
| 20 | Medical secretaries (4211) | £27,462 | £25,182 to £30,593 | about 26,000 |
| 21 | Legal secretaries (4212) | £27,824 | £24,737 to £33,984 | about 15,000 |
| 22 | Fishing and other elementary agriculture occupations n.e.c. (9119) | £27,976 | £24,841 to £31,948 | about 11,000 |
| 23 | Elementary administration occupations n.e.c. (9219) | £28,031 | £24,677 to £32,725 | about 10,000 |
| 24 | School secretaries (4213) | £28,245 | £24,481 to £32,874 | about 11,000 |
| 25 | Sports and leisure assistants (6211) | £28,272 | not published | about 14,000 |
These are full-time jobs only: part-time pay isn’t in these figures. Annual pay counts what an employee was paid over the tax year, including pay affected by absence (for example, special leave or parental leave), so it can differ from what a job’s rate alone would suggest.
How to read these figures
- Median, not average. The median is the middle salary: half of full-time employees in the job earn more and half earn less. ONS prefers it to the mean because a few very high earners pull the mean up.
- The middle half is the range between the 25th and 75th percentiles: a quarter of employees earn less than its lower figure and a quarter more than its upper figure.
- Full-time employees only, before tax. The figures are gross annual pay for full-time employee jobs, for employees on adult rates who have been in the same job for more than a year. They don’t cover the self-employed.
- Which year. ONS’s 2026 annual figures cover the tax year that ended on 5 April 2026. They are provisional and ONS revises them a year later.
- Job counts are indicative. ONS says its job numbers give a broad idea of each occupation’s size but aren’t accurate estimates. This page uses them only to leave out very small occupations (under 10,000 full-time jobs), whose rankings would rest on small samples.
- Groups, not job titles. Occupations are ONS’s Standard Occupational Classification (SOC 2020) groups. “n.e.c.” means “not elsewhere classified”: the group’s leftover jobs.
To see what a salary leaves you with after tax, use take-home pay by salary. To compare your own pay with your age group and where you work, see is my salary good?. For the pay of individual jobs, start from salary by profession.