Average Salary for a 25-Year-Old in the UK (2026): £32,347

Figures from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025 (April 2025 pay, the latest official data), DfE Graduate Labour Market Statistics 2024 and LEO 2022-23. Take-home pay is for the 2026/27 tax year. ASHE 2026 is due in late October and we will update this page on publication day.

The ONS does not publish a salary for 25-year-olds specifically. What it publishes is pay by age band, and 25 sits in the middle of the 22 to 29 group. In April 2025 the median full-time employee in that band earned £32,347, up 3.8% on the year. If you include part-time workers, the median for the age group was £29,855. Figures of £26,000 to £28,500 that still circulate online are from earlier ASHE releases and are two to three years out of date.

That single number hides a very wide spread, and the spread is the useful part. Here is the full distribution for 22 to 29-year-olds working full-time, with the neighbouring age bands for context.

What 22 to 29-year-olds earn: the full distribution

Measure	22–29 full-time	18–21 full-time	30–39 full-time
10th percentile	£22,758	£14,617	£25,041
Lower quartile	£26,429	£19,105	£30,717
Median	£32,347	£23,596	£40,668
Mean	£35,760	£24,394	£48,421
Upper quartile	£40,850	£27,571	£54,620
90th percentile	£52,197	£32,939	£75,041
Median, all employees (incl. part-time)	£29,855	£13,069	£36,000
Median hourly, full-time	£16.63	£12.91	£20.77

Gross annual pay, employees on adult rates who have been in the same job for over a year. Source: ONS ASHE 2025, Tables 6.7a and 6.6a.

Three things to take from it. The floor is set by the National Living Wage: at the £12.71 rate that applies to everyone aged 21 and over from April 2026, a 37.5-hour week pays about £24,800 a year, which is where the bottom fifth of this age group sits. The top tenth are already on £52,000 or more, usually in medicine, law, finance, engineering or software. And the climb is steep: the median rises by almost £9,000 between the 18–21 and 22–29 bands and by another £8,000 into the thirties, the two biggest steps in the whole salary-by-age curve.

Is your salary good for 25? Where each figure ranks

Use the full-time 22–29 distribution as the yardstick:

• Under £22,758: bottom 10%. Below the full-time National Living Wage floor for 2026, so this is usually part-time hours, an apprenticeship rate or a very low-paid sector.
• £22,758 to £26,429: bottom quarter. Typical of retail, hospitality, care and early-stage admin roles.
• £26,429 to £32,347: below median but above the lower quartile. Roughly 25 to 50% of full-timers your age earn less.
• £32,347 to £40,850: above median. More than half of your age group earns less than you.
• £40,850 to £52,197: top quarter.
• Over £52,197: top 10% for your age, and above the all-ages UK full-time median of £39,039 by a distance.

The right comparison is not just your age, though. A 25-year-old nurse on £31,000 and a 25-year-old software developer on £31,000 are in very different positions relative to their own professions. Where Do I Stand? puts your salary against people doing your job, not just people your age.

Take-home pay at 25: what £32,347 is worth

Gross figures flatter. In the 2026/27 tax year in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, with no pension contributions:

Gross salary	Take-home (no student loan)	Monthly	Take-home with Plan 2 loan	Monthly
£26,429 (lower quartile)	£22,548	£1,879	£22,548	£1,879
£32,347 (median)	£26,809	£2,234	£26,543	£2,212
£40,850 (upper quartile)	£32,932	£2,744	£31,900	£2,658
£52,197 (90th percentile)	£40,832	£3,403	£38,779	£3,232

A Plan 2 student loan costs nothing below the £29,385 repayment threshold and 9% of everything above it, which is why it barely registers at the median and takes over £2,000 a year at the 90th percentile. Auto-enrolment pension contributions (5% of qualifying earnings from you, 3% from the employer) would take roughly another £85 a month off the median take-home after basic-rate tax relief, and put about £175 a month into your pension. Scottish taxpayers pay slightly less at the median and more above £43,662. For your exact number, salaryincomecalculator.co.uk shows take-home at any salary, and our what salary do I need guide works backwards from a monthly figure.

Graduates vs non-graduates at 25

At 25 a graduate is typically three to four years into work; a non-graduate who started at 18 is seven years in. The data shows the graduate has usually caught up and passed by now, but not by as much as the brochures suggest.

The Department for Education’s Graduate Labour Market Statistics for 2024, from the Labour Force Survey, give median salaries for 21 to 30-year-olds of £34,000 for graduates, £37,000 for postgraduates and £27,000 for non-graduates: a £7,000 graduate premium at this age, against £11,500 across the whole working-age population. The same release recorded the unemployment rate for young non-graduates rising from 7.0% to 8.1%, the highest since 2015.

HMRC tax records (LEO) give a lower, more precise figure. Graduates of English universities who finished in 2018/19 had a median salary of £28,100 three years after graduation in the 2022-23 tax year, at which point most were 24 or 25. The lower quartile was £21,900, the upper quartile £36,100. Those are 2022-23 prices; add roughly 9% for today’s money, which puts the typical graduate at 25 at about £30,600, slightly below the all-worker median for the age band because it includes everyone in sustained employment, not only full-timers.

Subject matters more than graduate status. Median earnings three years after graduation, same release:

Subject	3 years out	Subject	3 years out
Medicine and dentistry	£49,600	Business and management	£28,500
Economics	£37,600	Biosciences	£27,400
Veterinary sciences	£36,900	Law	£27,000
Engineering	£35,800	History and archaeology	£26,600
Physics and astronomy	£35,400	English studies	£25,600
Mathematical sciences	£35,000	Education and teaching	£25,600
Nursing and midwifery	£33,200	Psychology	£25,200
Computing	£32,800	Creative arts and design	£23,000
Chemistry	£31,400	Performing arts	£21,500

A 25-year-old engineering or maths graduate is already above the full-time median for the age group; a law graduate at the same age is typically below it, and stays there until the profession’s steep later-career curve kicks in. What each degree pays at 1, 5 and 10 years has the full 28-subject table and the ten-year picture; the degree outcomes pages cover individual subjects.

Your region shifts every number above

National figures assume a national job market. Median full-time pay by place of work in April 2025 ran from £49,692 in London (27% above the UK figure) and £39,983 in the South East to £35,796 in Wales, £35,600 in the East Midlands and £34,403 in the North East (12% below). Applied to the 22–29 band, a 25-year-old at the regional median is on roughly £41,000 in London and £28,500 in the North East for the same relative position. London’s premium is also the most heavily taxed by rent: cost of living vs salary by region shows the North East leaving more disposable income at the median than London does.

Two other splits worth knowing. The gender pay gap is at its narrowest at this age, 0.9% on an hourly basis for 22 to 29-year-olds, before widening every decade to 12.5% in the fifties. And the public sector, which pays 6.1% annual regular pay growth against 2.8% in the private sector in the latest ONS labour market figures, is currently the faster-rising employer for people at the start of a career, although that is catch-up from earlier freezes rather than a lasting advantage.

What to do with this at 25

The twenties are the only decade in which the median moves by more than £8,000, and most of that movement happens by changing jobs rather than waiting for pay reviews. If you are below £32,347 full-time and in a profession whose median at your age is higher, the fastest correction is a move; check the occupation figure on its profession page first. If you are above it, the question is trajectory: the Salary Forecast tool projects where your occupation’s curve takes you by 30 and 40, and the Career Explorer shows which paths from your starting point keep climbing after the thirties plateau that catches many roles.

And whatever the number, negotiate it. The difference between accepting and countering a first or second offer compounds through every percentage rise that follows; how to negotiate a first salary covers how to do it with the data above in hand.

Sources: Office for National Statistics, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025 (provisional, published 23 October 2025): Table 6.7a (annual pay by age group), Table 6.6a (hourly pay by age), Table 7.7a (region, place of work); “Gender pay gap in the UK: 2025”; “Labour market overview, UK: August 2026”. Department for Education, Graduate Labour Market Statistics: calendar year 2024 (official statistics in development) and LEO Graduate Outcomes, tax year 2022-23. National Living Wage rates: GOV.UK. Take-home figures computed on 2026/27 PAYE and Class 1 NI rates, standard personal allowance, no pension. Crown copyright, Open Government Licence v3.0.

Frequently asked questions

What is the average salary for a 25-year-old in the UK? +

The median full-time salary for 22 to 29-year-olds was £32,347 in April 2025 (ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025), the latest official figure. Including part-time workers the median for the age group was £29,855. The ONS does not publish a figure for 25-year-olds alone; 22–29 is the band a 25-year-old sits in the middle of.

Is £30,000 a good salary at 25? +

It is close to typical. £30,000 is slightly below the full-time median for 22–29-year-olds (£32,347) but above the lower quartile (£26,429), so roughly 40% of full-time workers your age earn less. It is above the median for all employees in the age group (£29,855) and well below the all-ages UK full-time median of £39,039.

What is the take-home pay on £32,347? +

In 2026/27, in England, Wales or Northern Ireland with no pension contributions, £32,347 gross is about £26,809 a year after income tax and National Insurance, or £2,234 a month. With a Plan 2 student loan it is about £26,543 a year, £2,212 a month.

How much do graduates earn at 25 compared with non-graduates? +

The Department for Education's Graduate Labour Market Statistics for 2024 put the median salary of young (21–30) graduates at £34,000, postgraduates at £37,000 and non-graduates at £27,000. HMRC tax data (LEO) shows the median graduate three years after finishing a degree, typically at 24 or 25, earned £28,100 in the 2022-23 tax year, roughly £30,600 in today's money.