Pay

Mr. Clappison
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what estimate he has made of the number of employees in the UK with a salary of more than £40,000.

Angela Eagle
The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.

Letter from Karen Dunnell, dated 23 January 2008:

As National Statistician, I have been asked to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question asking what estimate has been made of the number of employees in the UK with a salary of more that £40,000. (180980)

Annual levels of earnings can be estimated from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), and are provided for all employees on adult rates who have been in the job for more than one year. I attach a table showing an estimate for 2007 of the percentage of UK employees with a salary of more than £40,000 per year.

ASHE is carried out in April each year and is the most comprehensive source of earnings information in the United Kingdom. However, ASHE methodology cannot be used to provide estimates of the numbers of employees whose salary is more than a specific amount, but can be used to provide estimates of proportions of employees in that category.

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|                                                                                                                                                           |Percentage|
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|All employees                                                                                                                                              |12        |
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|1 Employees on adult rates who have been in the same job for more than one year.Source:Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, Office for National Statistics.|          |
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