Indexed gross hourly pay in London and England (2002-2025)
Last updated: January 2026
Next update: December 2026
What does this indicator show?
This indicator shows how hourly pay for Londoners’ in employment (before tax, adjusted for inflation) has changed over time, using 2008 as a baseline.
We can use it to see how hourly pay has changed for the average Londoner, as well as for higher earners (those at the 90th percentile) and lower earners (those at the 10th percentile). Further down the page, a chart shows how hourly pay has changed in the last year, 5 years and 10 years for different income groups in London.
What does it tell us?
On average, Londoners are paid 3% less per-hour (as of 2025) than in 2008. But this is different across different income groups.
Low-income Londoners are paid significantly more per-hour than a decade ago
Hourly pay for lower earning Londoners at the 10th income percentile has grown significantly in the last 10 years.
Londoners in this group have seen their average hourly pay rise by more than a quarter over the last decade - meaning they now earn significantly more per-hour than they did before the COVID-19 pandemic. This rise is even more extreme in the rest of England.
This rise is likely driven by increases in the minimum and Living Wages. However, when we look at weekly and yearly pay - instead of hourly - we don’t see the same increase in earnings for those on lower incomes. We explore this in our blog.
Hourly pay for higher earners recovers from pandemic
Following the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a large decline in hourly gross pay (in real terms) for higher earners, with drops in the median and 90th percentile. Over the same time period, real-terms pay increased for low earners (10th percentile).
The COVID-19 pandemic seems to have had a greater economic impact on those who aren’t protected by the increase in minimum and living wages as the jobs at the bottom percentiles are.
By 2025, hourly pay for both these groups had almost recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
Change in real hourly gross pay by job pay percentile in London (2025)
This chart shows how hourly earnings have changed in the last one, five and ten years for Londoners across the income spectrum.
In the last 10 years, each group shown here has seen their hourly earnings rise in real terms. This is also true for the last year.
However, when looking at the change in hourly earnings within the last 5 years (in real terms), hourly earnings have increased for the lowest two thirds of whereas those above the middle income group have seen a real-terms decrease in gross hourly pay. Note that the comparison year here is 2020 which would have been feeling the first impacts of COVID-19 at the time of the survey (April 2020)
Learn more about how Londoners' pay has changed over time.
Want to know more?
If you want to explore this data in more depth, check the 'data source and notes' button on the above charts. This will tell you where the data comes from, where you may be able to dig deeper.