UK median full-time salary shows smallest increase since 2021

LONDON, Oct 22 (Reuters) - The median full-time annual pre-tax salary in Britain rose by the least since 2021 over the 12 months to April, increasing by 4.5% to £40,911 ($54,841), down from a 4.6% increase the year before, according to the country's largest official pay survey.

The Bank of England is watching pay as it judges the strength of inflation pressures triggered by the US-Iran war. Despite the small slowdown in annual salary growth, Thursday's data showed pay might have been rising slightly faster than previously thought.

Thursday's data from the Office for National Statistics' Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) showed weekly earnings in April were 4.9% higher than a year earlier, above the 4.7% rise previously reported in the ONS' regular smaller-scale monthly survey.

• The annual salary increase was the smallest since 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the rise in weekly earnings was faster than in 2025, suggesting pay growth accelerated over the course of the 12 months to April

• Weekly pay for full-time employees was up 5.8% year-on-year in April, while weekly part-time pay rose 2.9%, reflecting a fall in the weekly hours worked by part-time staff

• Full-time weekly earnings rose fastest for managers, up 6.7%, and slowest for factory workers, up 4.1%

• The gender pay gap for full-time workers – which does not account for differences in occupation, experience or qualifications – narrowed to 6.8% from 7.2%

• The ONS data was based on a sample of 197,000 employee records, the highest since the survey began

• The most recent ONS pay data, based on a smaller sample of businesses, showed weekly pay rose by an annual 3.1% in August and 3.7% in the three months to August

• BoE policymakers typically view pay growth much above 3.0% as making it hard to return inflation to their 2% target

• Britain's government is expected next week to set the 2027 rate for the minimum wage, which rose 4.1% in April to £12.71 an hour.

($1 = 0.7460 pounds)

(Reporting by David Milliken)