The average salary in the UK (according to ONS) is approx. 22K. A Gross salary of £21,900, less tax of £3400 and NIC of £1837, gives a monthly net of £1388


also take a look at this (what people earn: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=429134&in_page_id=2)


(from http://www.open2.net/sciencetechnologynature/maths/averages.html)

Though the mean is the most commonly used sort of average, the median is also in common use, and it can be important to know which is being used. For instance, in the UK Government’s major annual survey of earnings (Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2006), the mean gross annual pay of employees was recorded as £24,301, but the median gross annual pay of employees was recorded as £19,496. Half of all employees earned less than the median (because the median is the pay level that half of employees earn less than!). But over 60% of employees earned less than the mean. (So yes, it is true that most of us earn less than average, if ‘average’ means ‘mean’.)

If you think about patterns of pay, it’s not surprising that the mean and the median differ in this way. Nobody can earn, say, £25,000 less than the mean annual pay, because that would be saying they earned less than nothing. However, it’s far from unknown for people to earn £25,000 more than the mean annual pay. A few lucky individuals earn far, far more than that. If the earnings of all employees were put in a pot and divided out equally, the amount we’d all get would be the mean annual pay, and the existence of a few very well paid individuals makes this mean higher than you might expect, or at any rate higher than the median.

If you were involved in negotiating pay, would you use the median or mean in talking about ‘average pay’? Wouldn’t it depend on which side of the negotiation you were on? If someone starts talking about averages, you should be sure to find out what sort of average they are using.



20% below £10k
90% below £46k

top 10% earn 33% of all income

top 10% earn same as bottom 50% combined



how about profits (productivity)?


A report from the Institute of Fiscal
Studies into the affairs of the UK's super-rich has found that the top 10% (4.7
million adults) now take home 40% of all the income earned in the UK, with an
average pay of £67,000 per year. --- The top 1% (470,000 adults) get an average
pay of £222,000 per year. --- The top 0.1% (47,000 adults) get an average pay of
£780,000 per year. ---- Gerald Holtham, one of founders of the `New Labour'
project & former Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research believes
entrepreneurs have a right to make a fortune but greed is poisonous. He has
stated: "In a capitalist economy people who start & build great businesses must
be expected to become very rich. That's how the system works."

Of course he's correct, that is how the system works, but to consider people
making a fortune by exploiting people as a `right' is sickening. In contrast
to the massive wages of the elite, the average pay in the UK is £25,000
per year, though here in Wales the average is just £19,100.
It is those on low wages who are responsible for creating the wealth of society,
yet this wealth flows to the minority who own everything. This is because
capitalism is based on wage-slavery'; employees are robbed on a daily basis of
the full value of their work.
Wages always equal less than the value of the products & services people
provide; that's where profits come from. The difference between value & wages is
the profit margin stolen by the employer. The wage system should be abolished &
the capitalist system replaced by anarchism, where wealth belongs to no-one & is
held in common. To find out about the libertarian socialist alternatives to this
unjust, crazy system check out: libcom.org/library