Annual survey of hours and earnings: 2024
Summary of earnings statistics from the annual survey of hours and earnings (ASHE) published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Data and Methodology
About the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings data
The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) is the official source of UK earnings estimates. ASHE data is published annually and is based on a 1% sample of the Pay As You Earn system (PAYE). The ONS have released three statistical bulletins covering Employee earnings in the UK, Gender Pay Gap in the UK and Low and high pay in the UK.
All estimates published by ONS on the 29 October 2024 for 2024 are provisional and relate to the pay period that includes 17 April 2024. Estimates for 2023 have been revised and relate to the pay period that includes 19 April 2023. Estimates for 2020 and 2021 include furloughed employees and are based on actual payments made to the employee from company payrolls and the hours on which this pay was calculated, which in the case of furloughed employees are their usual hours.
Over the coronavirus pandemic period, earnings estimates were affected by changes in the composition of the workforce and the impact of Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), making interpretation difficult. In July 2021, ONS published a blog: How COVID-19 has impacted the Average Weekly Earnings data, which explains the complexities of interpreting earnings data during the Covid-19 period in relation to compositional and base effects which are likely to affect growth rates. In addition, data for 2020 and 2021 were subject to more uncertainty due to data collection disruption and lower response rates and should be treated with caution. Therefore, ONS encourage users to focus on long-term trends rather than year on year changes.
ASHE data are weighted to UK population totals from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) based on classes defined by region, occupation, age and sex.
From 2021, ONS have moved from Standard Occupation Classifications (SOC) 2010 to SOC 2020 for their occupation coding. This means earnings estimates for April 2021 based on SOC 2020 represent a break in the ASHE time series. Therefore, estimates pre- and post-2021 are not directly comparable.
In their October 2024 release, ONS have implemented improvements to the methods used for processing data returns to help address differences between ASHE and other sources of earnings data. Due to these methodological changes, data for 2023 and 2024 might not be directly comparable to data for 2022 and earlier years. For further details on the methodological changes implemented by ONS, please see the data sources and quality section of the ONS publication.
Quality and methodology of Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings Data
Further information on the quality and methodology of the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings data used within this publication are included within the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings quality and methodology information report.
How to access background or source data
Results are provided based on the provisional 2024 and revised 2023 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) data released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on 29 October 2024.
Time series data for hourly, weekly and annual earnings from ASHE are available on Nomis.
Related Links
Scottish Government Labour Market Statistics publications
ONS Employee earnings in the UK publication
ONS Gender pay gap in the UK publication
Contact
For enquiries about this publication please contact:
Labour Market Statistics,
Office of the Chief Economic Adviser
Telephone: 0131 244 6773,
E-mail: LMStats@gov.scot
For general enquiries about Scottish Government statistics please contact:
Office of the Chief Statistician
E-mail: statistics.enquiries@gov.scot
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