Average Earnings incl. Bonus

Average Earnings including bonuses, or Average Weekly Earnings total pay, tracks average weekly pay per employee across Great Britain. The headline is the 3-month average change versus the same period a year earlier, after seasonal adjustment. It covers employees in businesses in Great Britain, not the whole United Kingdom, excluding self-employed people, armed forces and supported trainees.

The Office for National Statistics publishes it each month from a survey of about 9000 businesses covering about 12.8 million employees. Its companion regular pay series excludes bonuses, so the gap between total and regular shows how awards shape growth. It was built with the Bank of England and HM Treasury to gauge wage-driven inflation pressure, with no fixed market threshold stated. It is not a pay rate gauge, since hiring mix and paid hours move the average while hourly rates stay fixed.

Monthly-paid returns cover the full pay period, while weekly-paid returns cover one reference week. Each release is provisional at first and confirmed in the following round, usually 6 to 7 weeks after the reference period. Release dates are announced about 12 months ahead, with morning publication on the stated day.

Revisions correct late returns and refresh seasonal factors, plus an annual settings review that can reach back across the series. Each edition sits beside employment, inflation-adjusted pay and wage-employment breakdowns.

Total pay moves with base pay, bonuses and workforce mix, not only with agreed rises.

• Total pay: whole-economy average weekly pay per employee, including bonuses, after seasonal adjustment.
• Regular pay: the same average excluding bonuses, showing underlying growth without lump-sum awards.
• Bonus pay: cash awards and payroll-paid stock awards, collected separately and volatile across the year.
• Arrears pay: backdated awards counted when paid in raw data but left out of the adjusted headline.
• Sector splits: private versus public sector and industries such as manufacturing, construction and finance show where growth concentrates.
• Real-pay companions: nominal pay divided by consumer-price inflation, showing whether earnings outpace prices.

In one past bulletin used as an example, total-pay growth was 6.9% while regular-pay growth reached 7.3%, equal to the joint highest rate on record. Total lagged regular because bonus payments were weak, while private-sector regular growth was 7.7% against 5.8% in the public sector. Finance and business services led at 9.0%, manufacturing reached 7.8%, and average levels stood at £651 for total pay and £607 for regular pay. Nominal growth looked strong, yet real pay still fell by 1.2% for total pay and 0.8% for regular pay amid high inflation.

• Weeklyise: monthly pay is divided by weeks in the period, about 4.348 for calendar months. Example: £2820 divided by 4.348 equals about £648.57 per week.
• Impute and reweight: missing regular pay and employment carry forward up to 5 months from the response on file. Bonuses are imputed from the same period a year earlier, then remaining responses are reweighted.
• Outliers: automatic checks compare pay per employee with similar firms, and outliers represent only themselves with weight 1.
• Level and index: total weighted pay divided by total weighted employment gives pounds per employee per week, expressed as an index multiplied by 100.
• Seasonal adjustment: a standard X13-ARIMA routine adjusts 27 series separately, so regular plus bonus need not equal total afterwards.
• Growth rate: headline uses 3-month average growth versus the same 3 months a year earlier, which smooths single-period volatility. Example: £645, £648 and £651 average £648 against a £606 prior-year mean, giving about 6.9%.