Median UK Household Income 2026

The detail

ONS puts median household disposable income at £706/week (£36,700/year) in the financial year ending 2024, the most recent complete dataset. Disposable means after Income Tax, National Insurance and employee pension deductions, plus state benefits, and the figures are equivalised for household size.

Equivalisation adjusts for household size: a £36,700 income supports a single person very differently from four people. ONS publishes "equivalised" numbers for this reason — headline numbers in news reports are usually equivalised to a two-adult-no-children household.

Regionally, London medians are ~20% above national; the North East and Northern Ireland sit ~10% below. Within London the range is extreme — Kensington & Chelsea has median household disposable income nearly 3× the UK median, driven by a small tail of very high earners.

Note: ONS separately publishes weekly gross pay (ASHE), weekly gross household income (Family Resources Survey) and disposable household income (HBAI). They're all "average UK income" in casual speech but mean different things — mixing them up is how contradictory claims about "typical" UK earnings appear in the press.