Self-Employed Average Income in the UK

The detail

Self-employment income is harder to pin down than employee pay because profits swing year to year and many people are self-employed only part-time or alongside a job. HMRC Survey of Personal Incomes data for 2023-24 shows £118 billion of total self-employment profit spread across 5.34 million people with self-employment income (from 5.62 million separate self-employment sources). That works out at an average, or mean, of roughly £22,000 of profit per person.

The mean flatters the typical self-employed worker. In the most recent comparable ONS administrative-data study (Self Assessment records, tax year ending 2018) the median self-employment income was around £8,800 while the mean was around £18,900 - so half of the self-employed earned less than about £9,000 from self-employment, and a minority of high earners dragged the average to more than double that. The gap between median and mean is far wider for the self-employed than for employees.

Even the mean of about £22,000 sits well below the £39,039 median full-time employee salary (ONS ASHE 2025), and the £29,700 median total income before tax for all taxpayers (HMRC 2023-24). Part of the gap is genuine lower earnings; part is that many people combine modest self-employment with employment, a pension or other income, so self-employment is only a slice of what they live on.

Sector matters: construction alone accounted for 22.7% of self-employment sources and 21.6% of profits in 2023-24 (HMRC). Because profits are volatile and net of business expenses, the self-employed face a different tax and National Insurance picture from employees - see our self-employed tax calculator for how Class 4 National Insurance and Income Tax apply to a given level of profit.