ASHE 2017 - the results are in!

richardcropper Nov 6th, 2017

The 2017 release of the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), conducted in April 2017, was published on 26th October 2017.

Median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees increased by 2.2%, to £550, as compared with the 2016 figure of £539.

The distribution of increases across the earnings spectrum was broadly similar to last year, with earnings tending to have risen most amongst lower paid workers.

Correspondingly, ASHE 6115 (Since reclassification in 2011, ASHE SOC 6115 has been published as an entirely separate dataset, with SOC 6145 & 6146 effectively being used as a proxy for it) at the 80th percentile (the most common measure used in periodical payments orders for care and case management) showed slightly better growth than the ASHE median, up 2.6%, to £403, against the 2016 figure.

Consistent with previous years, the “care, leisure and other service occupations” sector, in which ASHE 6115 sits, represents the lowest paid collective occupations of all those that are measured by the ONS in the ASHE survey.

The growth experienced in ASHE 6115, although still outpacing gross earnings for “all” employees (i.e. ASHE as the median), has decelerated compared with last year’s strong growth, and is likely to be as a result of the effect of the introduction of the National Living Wage having now mostly ‘washed through’.

The following table summarises the change in each percentile:

With CPI inflation running at 2.6% in April 2017, it is pleasing to see that earnings growth has also been positive in ‘real’ terms too, across all centiles.