Just what is the Average UK SALARY?

Pete111

Lokolo wrote: »

Yeh but they're living in Coventry.... (I joke! )

You shouldn't joke about these things. Living in Coventry is serious affliction...

mrmoose

A long time ago on these forums a spreadsheet was posted that had the average salary in each council area in the UK. In my area in South Yorkshire, this was around the 18k mark. The lowest I beleive was Berwick around 14k, and the highest was London, but cant remember what that was exactly. The average was around 25-26k. I think the figures were for 2009/10 financial year.

brightonman123

i cant see how an average can eb truly reflective of what most people earn.. i mean, roman abramovich (Chelsea FC)'s take home pay must surely shift the baseline somewhat!

Pete111

brightonman123 wrote: »

i cant see how an average can eb truly reflective of what most people earn.. i mean, roman abramovich (Chelsea FC)'s take home pay must surely shift the baseline somewhat!

Actually for tax reasons, I suspect his 'take home pay' is kept as as low as possible by his legion of accountants....

Most quoted averages are based on employees paid via PAYE and as such only partly representive. Self employed people tend not to feature in these studies (too hard to quantify). I suspect however they would push the averages up if accurately factored in.

BodyElectric

It doesn't really matter what the average is as it is meaningless, a few very high or very low salaries will throw it all out.

starrystarry

dave4545454 wrote: »

true and i also live in unemployment central, the west midlands, where i only know one person who has a paid job now. everyone else is unemployed.

I find that baffling, it's difficult to believe there are such differences around the regions. I live in the North West, where the streets are not exactly paved with gold, yet none of my friends or family or neighbours (as far as I know) are unemployed.

dave4545454

nellytheelephant wrote: »

Oh, blimey! Where in the West Mids? That's where I am too and can only think of one friend off the top of my head that's unemployed.

I would imagine that £26k in this area would be quite a bit higher than the average.

near wolverhampton. 26k would indeed be a lot higher than the average for this region, it's not known for being a well paid area!

eamon

I agree with others. The notion of an average salary is difficult to pin down unless you/we know the data set used. Wasn't there an interesting BBC show a couple of years ago that showed the spread of people that earned what salary. I find a much better idea is to try and work out the spending power of a particular salary . For example many years ago when I earned about £7k pa I was talking to a colleague that worked for the same company but she was in London and her salary was about £14k. She was astonished that I could buy a house, run a car, go on holiday and go partying at the weekend. Its all relative to your geographical location.

nellytheelephant

dave4545454 wrote: »

near wolverhampton. 26k would indeed be a lot higher than the average for this region, it's not known for being a well paid area!

Same(ish) area as me (well, depending which side of Wolverhampton!!). I agree that 26k would probably be high, purely because of the kinds of jobs around here - unemployment doesn't seem as high as it was - I've lost my job last week, and I've had 2 interviews since and have 2 more tomorrow. I'm not a 'skilled' worker, I'd have said the employment rate in the area has picked up over the last year or so

Must be opposite sides of Wolves

Derivative

The median salary is not thrown off by low/high end - example, take nine numbers

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 22 400

The median there is 5.