Top 10% UK Salary: Where the 90th Percentile Sits

The detail

ONS ASHE 2025 full-time annual pay shows the 90th percentile at £76,903 — meaning if you earn more than that, you're in the top 10% of UK full-time employees by salary. The 95th percentile is £99,387, so around £100,000 puts you just inside the top 5%; the 99th percentile is £186,840, the threshold for the top 1% of full-time salaries.

The ASHE percentile is a salary-only cut — it doesn't include self-employed earnings, dividends, or investment income. For total-income percentiles see HMRC Personal Incomes Statistics (used for the "top 1% UK" figure), which shows a fatter tail than ASHE because of dividend-heavy Ltd company directors and partners.

The distance between the median and the 90th percentile — £39,039 to £76,903 — illustrates the roughly 2× "middle to rich" gap. This ratio has been broadly stable for the last decade, even though nominal levels have drifted upwards.