Wages throughout the country: how does your area compare? (2024)

Heat map of wages in England, Wales and Scotland Photograph: Graphic

The headline figures in this year's annual survey of hours and earnings – the official survey of wages across the United Kingdom – make difficult enough reading on their own: the average full-time worker's income rose just 1.4% on 2010, considerably less than the current rate of CPI inflation.

However, even this figure masks several ills in the current state of the UK labour market, with falling numbers in full-time work, rising wage inequality, and slowing progress in reaching equality in pay between women and men.

The median salary for a full-time UK worker – the rate at which half of UK's employees earn more, and half less – reached £26,244 in 2011, 1.4% higher than 2010. Once the country's 5.8 million part-time workers are factored into the picture, though, salaries increased just 0.5% year-on-year, to £21,326.

This was driven by a substantial fall in the indicitive numbers of people in full time work, offset partially by an increased number of people in power-paying part time roles. The total number of full-time workers in the UK was down 380,000 on 2010 figures at 15.2 million, while part-time jobs were up by 78,000, hitting 5.8 million. This shift in job function depressed overall salary growth just a tenth of inflation.

Pay for low earners also grew far less than that of high earners, with the wages of the bottom 10% increasing just 0.1% year-on-year, while the top 10% of earners saw salary increases of 1.8%.

Directors and senior managers enjoyed particularly large salary increases in 2011, and were among a small minority of groups to have real-terms wage growth in 2011.

Chief executives and directors of "leading organisations" earnings rose 15% to £112,157, in part a result of trends shifting earnings to basic pay and away from bonuses.

Brokers' earning rose 17.3% to £54,924, while salaries of senior corporate managers also increased substantially – up 7.1% year-on-year to £77,679.

By contrast, the annual pay of waiters and waitresses (mostly part-time workers) fell 11.2% year-on-year to £5,660 – among the most substantial drop of any group of workers. Hairdressers' salaries fell 4.5% to £9,599, while cleaners' compensation fell 3.4%.

The amount of pay needed to be in the top 10% of full-time earners increased by 1.9% since 2010, to £52,643; while the threshold for the bottom 10% of full-time workers increased 0.6%, to £14,905.

John Philpott, chief economic advisor to the Chartered Institute of Professional Development, warned the 2011 earnings figures showed the UK could be heading towards US-style wage inequality.

"The bottom deciles [earners] really haven't seen This shows it's not that 'we're all in this together' – people at the bottom are being hit the hardest,"

he said.

"Unskilled workers are facing a choice between no pay and very low pay. One feature of the previous Labour administration was widening inequality, but real wages increased across every income group.

This year's earnings figures, with wages stagnant in even nominal terms, look more like those from the USA than the UK.

It puts discussions on the top rate of tax into perspective: claims high earners need extra support in the form of tax cuts are highly dubious given the increases in pay awarded."

The gender pay gap continued to narrow in 2011, but progress was markedly slower than in 2010. Women in full-time employment earn on average £5,409 less than men – a gap £179 narrower than it was in 2010. Last year, the pay gap had narrowed by £558. The slowdown means it would take an extra 19 years for women's pay to equal that of men's, with 2041 being the year in which full-time earning between the genders would equate.

Regional differences in salaries also sustained year-on-year. England's highest earning constituency, Westminster North, had a small 0.5% drop in its median pay in 2011, but its average earnings of £39,745 were still more than twice those of the country's poorest, Blackpool South.

Residents of Blackpool South endured a larger drop in pay than that of Westminster, at 0.8%, and also earn on average just £15,481 – which is below the UK's official poverty line for a single adult.

The median salary in London, £27,560, was almost 50% higher than Northern Ireland's £18,494, the lowest-earning region of the UK. Average earnings in Scotland were £20,862, and Wales £19,472.

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