Results Day 2026: What Each Degree Pays at 1, 5 & 10 Years

On 13 August 2026 a record 262,820 UK 18-year-olds were accepted onto degree courses, 3% more than at the same point last year, and a record 17,640 were placed through Clearing on the first day alone. Top grades edged up again, with 28.5% of a record 906,425 A-level entries awarded A* or A. Clearing stays open until 19 October, so tens of thousands of decisions are still being made this month.

They are being made into the weakest graduate jobs market since 2020: graduate vacancies have shrunk, employers are hiring fewer entry-level staff and asking for more specific skills, particularly in AI and data, and the ONS’s August labour market release put unemployment at 4.9% with vacancies down to 707,000.

So it is worth asking the question properly: what does a degree actually pay? Not what universities say, and not what the highest-profile graduate schemes advertise, but what graduates of each subject were actually earning one, three, five and ten years out, according to their tax records. That dataset exists. It is called LEO, it is published by the Department for Education from HMRC data, and this is what it shows.

The short version

• The median graduate earned £24,800 one year after graduating, £31,400 after five years and £36,100 after ten. Five-year earnings have risen 21% in cash terms since 2016-17, roughly in line with inflation: in real terms, the typical graduate’s pay five years out has stood still.
• Subject matters at the top and bottom. Medicine, economics, physics, engineering and maths graduates earned £41,600 to £53,300 five years out. Creative arts, performing arts, education and health and social care graduates earned £24,500 to £28,100.
• The spread within a subject is wider than the gap between subjects. Ten years out, the top quarter of creative arts graduates (£39,200+) out-earned the bottom quarter of computing (£29,600) and business (£26,300) graduates. Which quarter you land in matters more than which table you pick from.
• Early-career risk is not the same as pay. Nursing graduates had the highest starting pay outside medicine (£31,400) and almost everyone in work, but the flattest trajectory. Computing had one of the highest medians and one of the highest rates of graduates with no sustained job or study a year out (9.1%).

How we measured it

LEO (Longitudinal Education Outcomes) links university records to HMRC tax and benefit data for every graduate of an English higher education provider. We use the latest release, covering the 2022-23 tax year, for UK-domiciled first-degree graduates in sustained employment. “One year after graduation” means the cohort that graduated in 2020/21; five years means 2016/17; ten years means 2011/12. Figures are median annualised earnings in 2022-23 prices; add roughly 9% for today’s money. Quartiles show the spread. “No sustained destination” means no sustained employment, further study or both in that year.

Two caveats. LEO is descriptive, not causal: economics graduates earn more partly because of who chooses economics. And it tracks graduates who went to university in England, though the pattern is similar across the UK.

The national picture

Years after graduation	Graduated	In sustained employment	In further study	No sustained destination	Lower quartile	Median	Upper quartile
1	2020/21	89.6%	27.0%	7.4%	£19,300	£24,800	£31,400
3	2018/19	88.9%	16.4%	6.8%	£21,900	£28,100	£36,100
5	2016/17	88.6%	12.1%	6.2%	£23,700	£31,400	£42,300
10	2011/12	85.8%	6.1%	5.3%	£24,100	£36,100	£51,500

The shape is the important thing. The typical graduate’s pay rises by about 45% between year one and year ten, but the upper quartile rises by 64% and the lower quartile by 25%. The gap between graduates of the same year widens every year after they leave.

It is also worth knowing that these figures have been running roughly flat in real terms. The five-year median was £25,900 in the 2016-17 tax year and £31,400 in 2022-23, a rise of 21% against CPIH inflation of around 24% over the same period. First-year pay did slightly better (up 26%), which suggests starting salaries have at least kept pace. The graduate premium has not collapsed, but it has not grown either, and that is the context for the record number of people now entering the system.

Earnings by subject

Sorted by median earnings five years after graduation. Lower and upper quartiles are at ten years.

Subject	1 year	5 years	10 years	10-yr lower quartile	10-yr upper quartile	No sustained destination at 1 yr
Medicine and dentistry	£40,200	£53,300	£61,000	£41,200	£77,600	1.9%
Economics	£29,600	£50,400	£68,600	£43,800	£101,800	7.2%
Physics and astronomy	£29,200	£42,000	£48,500	£37,200	£70,400	6.6%
Engineering	£30,300	£41,600	£50,400	£37,000	£66,100	6.1%
Mathematical sciences	£28,500	£41,600	£51,500	£36,300	£80,700	6.1%
Veterinary sciences	£32,800	£40,200	£41,600	£25,900	£54,800	2.7%
Medical sciences	£25,900	£38,700	£42,300	£30,300	£56,200	5.7%
Computing	£28,100	£38,000	£44,900	£29,600	£66,400	9.1%
Politics	£25,600	£35,400	£43,800	£29,900	£64,600	8.1%
Chemistry	£26,300	£35,400	£42,700	£32,500	£59,100	5.5%
Nursing and midwifery	£31,400	£34,300	£35,400	£24,900	£44,200	3.2%
Languages and area studies	£25,200	£33,900	£38,700	£26,300	£56,600	8.4%
Business and management	£25,200	£33,200	£39,400	£26,300	£59,900	8.6%
Allied health	£26,300	£32,100	£32,500	£21,200	£43,100	4.7%
Law	£23,000	£32,100	£40,500	£27,400	£62,400	6.0%
Biosciences	£23,000	£31,400	£37,600	£26,600	£51,500	7.5%
Philosophy and religious studies	£23,000	£31,300	£36,900	£25,200	£53,700	7.8%
History and archaeology	£22,600	£31,000	£37,600	£26,300	£54,000	6.5%
Materials and technology	£25,600	£30,700	£35,000	£24,100	£48,500	7.1%
Combined and general studies	£24,100	£29,200	£30,700	£17,500	£44,900	6.9%
English studies	£21,500	£28,800	£33,200	£23,000	£44,900	8.1%
Sport and exercise sciences	£20,800	£28,500	£34,700	£25,200	£44,500	6.0%
Psychology	£21,500	£28,100	£32,100	£21,900	£43,100	6.6%
Health and social care	£23,400	£28,100	£30,300	£19,700	£40,500	7.0%
Education and teaching	£23,000	£27,400	£27,700	£18,200	£37,200	5.4%
Creative arts and design	£20,400	£25,600	£28,100	£18,300	£39,200	12.4%
Performing arts	£18,200	£24,500	£28,100	£19,000	£38,300	10.2%
All graduates	£24,800	£31,400	£36,100	£24,100	£51,500	7.4%

Reading the table

The top is steep. Economics is the standout: a moderate start at £29,600, then £50,400 at five years and £68,600 at ten, with an upper quartile above £100,000. Medicine starts highest and stays high, with a narrower range than economics because most of the profession sits on a national pay scale. Maths, physics and engineering sit together at £41,600 to £42,000 five years out, with maths having the widest upside (£80,700 upper quartile at ten years).

Two kinds of “good” start. Nursing graduates earned £31,400 a year out, more than computing or engineering graduates, with 95.4% in sustained work and only 3.2% without a destination. Ten years on, the median is £35,400. It is the most secure start in the table and the flattest trajectory. Education and teaching follows the same shape: a safe, early-career floor and little growth, with a ten-year lower quartile of £18,200 that reflects how much of the profession works part-time by then.

Computing is two stories in one. A £38,000 median at five years and £66,400 at the upper quartile, but also 85.9% in sustained employment at one year, one of the three lowest rates of any subject, and 9.1% with no sustained destination. That matches what we found in our analysis of UK tech pay this month: the specialist end of tech is still being bid up while the entry-level generalist end is where the hiring squeeze has landed. For a 2026 applicant, computing offers the highest ceiling outside medicine and economics and one of the hardest first years.

Business and management is the biggest subject and the widest. 41,655 graduates in the one-year cohort, a median that tracks the national average almost exactly, and a ten-year range from £26,300 to £59,900. Which business degree matters: within the group, finance graduates earned £37,600 at five years, management and accounting £35,800, marketing £33,200, general business studies £32,800 and human resource management £31,000.

The bottom of the table is not a single story either. Creative arts and performing arts have the lowest medians and the highest no-destination rates (12.4% and 10.2%), but also upper quartiles near £39,000 at ten years. Health and social care and education have low medians with low risk: most graduates are in work, on modest public-sector pay.

Within the subject, the spread is the story

At ten years the national interquartile range is £24,100 to £51,500, and most individual subjects have a range of £25,000 to £40,000 between their lower and upper quartiles. Put the subjects side by side and the overlaps are striking:

• The upper quartile of creative arts graduates (£39,200) earned more than the lower quartile of computing (£29,600), business (£26,300), law (£27,400) and engineering (£37,000) graduates.
• The lower quartile of economics graduates (£43,800) earned more than the median graduate of 20 of the 27 subjects in the table.
• The lower quartile of medicine (£41,200) was above the upper quartile of education, health and social care, creative arts and performing arts.

The detailed subject codes tell the same story. Five years out, software engineering (£40,500) and computer science (£39,400) graduates earned a third more than computer games and animation graduates (£29,200), all inside “computing”. Biology graduates (£31,800) earned 28% more than zoology graduates (£24,800), both “biosciences”. Design studies (£27,000) sits well above fine art (£22,600). At the very top of the 73 detailed subjects with enough graduates to measure are dentistry (£58,500), medicine (£52,900) and economics (£50,400); at the bottom are art (£22,600), dance and childhood and youth studies (both £23,700).

Where you work matters as much as what you studied

LEO also records the region graduates worked in. For business and management graduates five years out, the median was £37,200 in London and £28,800 in the North East. For computing it was £46,100 in London against £30,300 in the North East, a 52% premium. Law graduates in London earned £39,400, against £28,100 in the West Midlands and North East. The exception, again, is nursing, where a national pay scale compresses the range to £32,100 to £40,900, London included. A student choosing a subject for its salary prospects is also, implicitly, choosing a city.

The gender gap starts early and varies by subject

Five years out, male economics graduates earned £50,700 and female economics graduates £50,000, a gap of 1.4%. In engineering it was 4.3% and in physics 3.3%. In computing it was 11.4% (£38,700 against £34,300), in business 11.3%, in education 13.2% and in nursing 14.1%. In performing arts, English and chemistry, women out-earned men. The gaps are in medians, not like-for-like roles, and they reflect which parts of each field men and women end up in as much as pay for the same job; but they are visible within five years of graduating, and they are smallest in the subjects with the most structured, scale-based careers.

If you are still deciding this month

The record intake of 2026 will graduate in 2029 into a market nobody can forecast. What the tax data can tell you is which bets have historically paid, and how.

1. Look at the five- and ten-year figures, not the starting salary. The subjects with the best first year (nursing, veterinary science) are not the ones with the best tenth year (economics, maths, medicine). Decide which shape you want.
2. Check the risk column. In a weak graduate market, the share of graduates with no sustained destination at one year is the number to watch. It ranges from 1.9% (medicine) to 12.4% (creative arts), and computing’s 9.1% is the surprise.
3. Choose the specialism, not the label. Finance over general business, software engineering over games, biology over zoology: the detailed subject moves the five-year median by £4,000 to £11,000 within the same department.
4. Remember the spread is yours to move. The difference between a subject’s lower and upper quartile is usually bigger than the difference between subjects. Grades, placements, the first job and the city you take it in are what decide which quartile you end up in.

If you are weighing subjects against careers rather than the other way round, our career discovery quiz matches interests and skills to 50 UK career paths with their real salary ranges, and every one of the 412 occupation pages shows what the destination jobs actually pay. For the wider picture, see what UK graduates actually earn, how much university choice matters, how to think about the return on a degree, and our analysis of the 2026 graduate vacancy slump.

Sources: Department for Education, LEO Graduate and Postgraduate Outcomes, tax year 2022-23 (published June 2025): UK-domiciled first-degree graduates of English higher education providers, earnings of those in sustained employment, by subject (CAH2 and CAH3), sex and region of employment. Inflation: ONS CPIH. Results-day figures: UCAS (13 August 2026); A-level grade statistics: JCQ/Ofqual (13 August 2026). Labour market: ONS Labour market overview, UK: August 2026. Crown copyright, Open Government Licence v3.0.