http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8151355.stm
"Boris Johnson refers to £250,000 a year as "chicken-feed". Manchester City offer six figures a week. Goldman Sachs doles out big bonuses. BBC bosses face flak over their earnings. But just what constitutes a "big" salary these days and how has how we feel about them changed?"
"Rarely a day seems to pass these days when there is not soul-searching over how much people are paid, whether it's bankers' bonuses or public sector salaries. But are we clear about the levels of earnings that we are worried about?
WHAT'S AN AVERAGE SALARY?
Before you even get into what constitutes a "big" salary in the UK, you must first tackle the question of what an "average" salary is."
"The Office for National Statistics' Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) provides some of the most reliable figures.
According to ASHE, "mean" gross annual earnings across all employee jobs in 2008 came to £26,020. You may think that's rather a high "average" salary. And if you look just at the figures for full-time employees, that figure rises to £31,323.
Another way of measuring it is "median" gross annual earnings. According to ASHE, this was the more modest figure of £20,801, across all employee jobs. If you are earning that sum a year, you are "Mr or Mrs [or Ms] Mid-Point" - precisely half the surveyed working population earns less than you and half more. For just full-time employees, the median rises to £25,123".
This is an older article but salaries havent gone up much over the last few years anyway.
