Sixty per cent of Brits earning £80,000-£100,000 say they’re “about average” | Highly paid people tend to see themselves as “normal” on the income scale – and “worse off” than their social circle.
Sixty per cent of Brits earning £80,000-£100,000 say they’re “about average” | Highly paid people tend to see themselves as “normal” on the income scale – and “worse off” than their social circle.
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majority of highly paid British voters believe they are on average incomes, according to exclusive polling for the New Statesman by Redfield & Wilton Strategies*.
Over half of Brits earning significantly more than the average household income consider themselves “about average” for UK households.
**What is the average household income in the UK?**
The median household income in the UK (after direct taxes have been deducted) was £31,400 in the financial year ending in 2021, according to the latest figure from the Office for National Statistics.
Yet our survey finds 50.4 per cent of those whose household net incomes are £40,001 and above consider their earnings “about average”. As many as 59 per cent of those with a household income of £80,001-£100,000 say they earn “about average”.
When asked whether they feel “normal”, “fortunate”, or “hard done by” when compared with the average UK citizen, 62 per cent of those with incomes in the range £60,001-£100,000 say “normal”. In fact, half of all those earning £40,001 and above – significantly more than the average household income – say they feel “normal”.
Similarly, those on below-average incomes also view themselves as “normal”: 61 per cent of people whose net income is below £20,001 chose “normal” rather than “fortunate” or “hard done by” when comparing themselves with the average citizen.
In general, members of the British public tend to compare their income negatively to what others earn. People are more likely to feel that they have a below-average income (36 per cent overall) than above-average (16 per cent), while 47 per cent feel they earn about average.
The polling suggests people are more likely to underestimate than to overestimate their incomes when comparing themselves with the average UK citizen. This finding chimes with previous polling by the New Statesman indicating that a quarter of Britons paid £100,000 or more still consider themselves “working class” (when salary is now considered the main indicator of class by a majority of Brits).
**Do you earn more or less than your friends?**
If British people judge their income harshly compared with the rest of the country, they do so even more when comparing themselves with the family members and friends they see most often.
While 39 per cent of respondents think their social circle is, in general, better off than they are, only 11 per cent believe their friends and family to be worse off on the whole (50 per cent say “about the same”).
Even those on very high incomes have a tendency to feel less fortunate than close friends and family: 43 per cent of those with a household income of £100,001-£120,000 consider their social circle better off than they are, while virtually no one in that group considers it worse off (57 per cent say “about the same”).
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean people are jealous of those around them. A significant majority feel “normal” compared with their close friends and family (63 per cent), rather than “hard done by” (19 per cent) or “fortunate” (18 per cent).
We tend to be surrounded by people who are in a similar financial situation, and therefore consider ourselves “the norm” no matter what we earn, according to academics who are experts in this area. In fact, in each of our income brackets (apart from the very top, £120,000 and above), respondents were most likely to class themselves as “normal” in the context of their social circles rather than “hard done by” or “fortunate”. And 58.3 per cent of those on £40,001-£120,000 consider themselves “normal” compared with the average UK citizen.
Such an outlook warps our perceptions – particularly those of the rich – as discovered by Dr Katharina Hecht, a visiting fellow at the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute. From interviews with 30 UK-based top income earners (the “1 per cent”), she found that the majority did not see themselves as belonging to the “top” group in society.
The New Statesman’s latest findings “chime with my research – and are in line with ‘availability bias’, whereby people draw conclusions about society at large from their social circle”, says Hecht.
“Also, in research which asks people to place themselves on a ladder from one to ten, people tend to see themselves towards the middle of society – though those with higher education levels, for instance, do place themselves as higher on the ladder, on average, than people with lower levels of education,” she adds.
“People like to feel ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary’. We would like to belong. We do not like to see ourselves as part of the ‘fringe’ of society.”
**How do different demographics feel about their income?**
Women are slightly more likely than men (40 per cent to 33 per cent) to say their household income is below average.
When it comes to political views, Liberal Democrat voters are more likely to think they have an above-average household income (24 per cent) than Labour (19 per cent) or Conservative voters (17 per cent). Lib Dem voters are also less likely than supporters of the main two parties to think their general social circle is better off than they are.
Younger people are more likely to think their general social circle is better off than they are, whereas older people are likely to view friends and family as having the same level of income. This discrepancy could be to do with generational wealth divides within families – parents and grandparents are more likely to own homes, for instance, so younger people may tend to see them as better off.
Our polling shows that those who live in rented accommodation are more likely to think their income is below average (45 per cent) than those who own their own property (30 per cent).
Renters are also more likely to say they feel “hard done by” compared with the average UK citizen than homeowners are (26 per cent vs 14 per cent), and also when comparing themselves with their close friends and family (25 per cent of renters vs 14 per cent of homeowners).
These results show how hard it is for politicians seeking public buy-in for taxing the wealthy. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, for example, recently refused to confirm to the New Statesman that he would follow through with his leadership election pledge to raise taxes on the top 5 per cent of earners.
However illogical it looks on paper, most British voters – even those far above the average income – consider themselves normal, and are more likely to feel worse off than the average citizen and people around them, than they are to feel better off. An understanding of this reality is vital to those campaigning to create a fairer society.
**A weighted sample of 2,000 eligible voters in Great Britain were surveyed on 15 June 2022.*
The whole article is a bit of a stretch.
> In fact, half of all those earning £40,001 and above – significantly more than the average household income – say they feel “normal”.
The [ONS](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/householddisposableincomeandinequality/financialyear2020) has various figures for the “average household income”, with the mean disposable income (income after tax) at £36,900. £40 *is* pretty “normal”.
Living standards and wages are being eroded so that 80k is worth less and less and the strata above them are paid millions. Its a decent wage but I can see why you wouldnt necessarily think you were doing anything other than OK.
If you really want to tackle equality, maybe start with the people who dont earn a salary but draw dividends.
I earn over £100k, but as a sole earner. I’m well aware that being a sole earner household is itself a huge privilege. But, the reality is that a couple earning £30-40k has pretty much the same money in the bank (And are all eligable for things like child benefit and free school hours).
I’m not moaning, I’m not pleading poverty, but there’s a frustrating assumption that earning £100k means you’re ‘rich’. Lucky, absolutely. Grateful, most definitely. But rich? No.
IME, nobody earning £100k doesn’t realise that they are considerably more than the national average. What tends to shock us is that it never feels like our lifestyle is able to match what we perceived a £100k lifestyle to be like – and I suspect that’s the same for people looking to us, too. They run the numbers, and imagine villas in France, hot cars on the drive and fancy houses.
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The aim of stories like this is to get you to hate those a bit better off.
Funny how a story saying tory landlords earned 2.8mn was posted recently too isnt it.
Your neighbour on 100k isnt spaffing billions of £ up the wall to their m8s to guarantee a 6 figure “consultant” job after they leave govt.
Love reading how much people struggle as someone under 25k with a mortgage. I’m not even saying I struggle, people clearly just spend more if they earn more.
cool so let’s put minimum wage up to a ‘normal’ level then
I earn that range, have a mortgage in the £400’s, didn’t have a car (bus type person / walk) but have just recently been gifted an old Nissan Micra that needs a bit of work (bereavement). Definitely don’t feel that far out of normal – other than that I have savings, which I appreciate is a big thing.
Have to remind myself constantly how unbelievably fortunate I am even though I can’t afford one of those mansions that everyone seems to own nowadays, nor to drive a fancy car, or to fly business class. Bottom line is though that it’s the 1% stealing money from the rest of us and it’s just absolutely appalling that emergency service workers, teachers, key workers (retail) etc etc are earning 20-30k and expected to be be happy with it.
£80,000 is high, but it’s also well within the range of salaries that any of us could potentially earn with enough time and effort. It’s the salary of a tradesman who runs their own business, or a professional towards the end of their career. People really need to stop with this ridiculous belief that anyone who earns more than the average wage is part of the “evil elite”.
Bashing those earning 100k is letting off those earning 1m. Especially considering a lot of those people earning 100k are in London/South East, where the cost of living is especially high.
I’ve just breached the £200k mark, after taxes it’s nearer £100k though.
After paying for the cars, my wife’s boob job and my hair transplant, a pony for daughter Lucy plus school fees we are left relying on food banks.
I don’t like the wording here. It’s way too vague. It’s not a direct are you an above average earner, it’s are you normal on the income scale.
Which… Yes. 80k a year is at the top of the normal income scale. Nothing weird to see there. People earning that much can be very normal.
If someone has never experienced poverty then a high wage will seem normal.
When I went from spending the majority of my 20s struggling to survive to working my way up to a £50k salary, it didn’t feel normal and I squandered most of my disposable income.
Middle class aspiring to be top class is what keeps the people fighting amongst themselves.
Also I’d gather most of those high earners are in the city. Be it London or otherwise. That amount of money in London is peanuts. Surrounded by infinite wealth, millionaires and billionaires.
I earn £70k and my fiancee earns £40k, we live in Manchester, and it’s really fucking easy to spend it! A slight crack in the shower led to plumbing and plastering repairs costing easily £1k. We’ve been told the car (a 2010 Kia) needs a new clutch but I don’t fancy spending another £1k right this minute.
However I was earning £25k in 2019, and this already made me one of the highest earners in my friendship circle, so I am aware exactly how lucky we’ve got it. A few years ago I wouldn’t have been able to fix these problems. I can see energy prices rise and not feel increasing terror. I can actually live in a nice house rather than a shitty rental. I can go out to a concert and buy a drink at the bar. I actually bought a car rather than got daddy to do it.
I’m only not earning £25k because we got pregnant and full-time childcare costs made working for £25k minus tax seem pointless, if I could do a little freelance wfh instead. Fortunately the freelance went better than expected. Otherwise we would be realllly struggling.
But I still don’t feel like I’m set for life and never have to worry about things. I don’t know how average earners are going to cope.
In fairness a lot of people consider certain aspects of their lives ‘essential.’
Car, golf membership, etc.
You consider those things ‘rights’ the wealthier you get. It’s human nature.
Also you have to keep your new circle happy. So dinner parties. Etc
Can confirm.
My mother has an old work friend. Their household income is around the 150k mark (husband works in big oil, she works in big pharma now).
They genuinely think they’re poor because some of their friends have swimming pools and they don’t.
The woman said I was irresponsible for not saving for a mortgage. At the time I was on a 10 month postdoc contract that paid a 10k stipend for the entire period. My rent alone was 600pcm so do the maths.
So yeah, complete cunts.
This is more of a representation on how utterly fucked up the economy is than people having warped perceptions. Especially with house prices being what they are, a wage of 80-100k barely gets you a mortgage on a 3 bed semi in some parts of the country.
This entire comment thread is evidence the article is correct. People are delusional.
try living on a zero hours contract min wage and never seeing 1k a month, be lucky to even make half that sometimes.
Get a better job…most require training/education which requires money…you can’t save when you can’t even afford food
Move elsewhere? also requires money
Mental health is destroyed, which impacts physical health cuz its all connected.
Can’t get any treatment as can’t get a Drs appointment…I don’t blame the NHS tho as its been under funded the last decade and its being privatized but no one wants to believe that.
Nurses, Drs, overworked, underpaid and treated like shit so many are quitting a job they want to do, less staff means, less patient care, means more people suffer and more dying, means more people grow hate towards the NHS, instead of those who are causing this.
Jesus wept I’ve got an interview for a 23k/year job coming up and it would literally change my life, I genuinely can’t mentally comprehend what 80 grand a year would be like.
The 1% aren’t the problem, the 0.1% are. I don’t care if you make 100-200k a year, the one I hate is your boss who rakes in millions a month, the people who need their wealth taken from them.
This reminds me of the guy on Question Time a few years ago who was convinced he wasnt in the top 5% of earners. Despite earning 80k.
If you think that earning 80k allows a standard of ‘average’ lifestyle you definitely have no idea what it’s like surviving on 20k
Bloody Hell. I’m on just under £60k and I know I earn well above average. My first job was £20k and I knew I was doing well then. I’d love to earn £100k. How on earth can these people be so out of touch?!
My take home for 21-22 was £22,719. I can only dream of what people on £10k more per year are spending their money on!
Please don’t fall into the trap of hating the working class guy next to you who earns 10/20k more than you a year. Hate the capitalist who are robbing all of us blind every day.
I’m more and more moving away from”Tax the Rich” and towards “Tax Only the Rich”.
The tax free allowance should be 100k, and the base rate should be 40%, 80% after 200k, 90% at 500k, 99% after 1m. And I’m counting all income, not just “wages”.
And if the response to that is “the Rich will leave!”, let them. I’ll take their land as compulsory purchase, nationalise their business and slam the door on them on the way out.
The median salary for a full-time worker in the UK is currently £31,285. Assuming no student loan and a 3.5% pension contribution, that’s a take home pay of £24,004.58 p/a, or £2019.55 p/m.
Let’s say our average earner wants to buy their first home, and they would like a 2 bedroom place. A room for them and a guest room for when any friends/family visit.
Is that a reasonable life expectation, for the average UK worker? Let’s see…
The national average price for a 2 bed house, is £255,172. A typical 90% mortgage, over 25 years, at 3.92%, would require a deposit of £25,517, with mortgage repayments of £1,202 per month.
If our average earner could save 25% of their monthly take-home pay (£504.89), it would take them 4 years and 3 months to save the required deposit.
Let’s say they do that, and our average earner has £25,517 saved. Could they actually get a mortgage for the amount they need?
Using Barclays “mortgage affordability calculator”, a single applicant, earning the national average £31,285 p/a, with no dependents and literally no other debt could be eligible for a mortgage of, “£131,726 – £165,258”.
So in the best case scenario, the theoretical average UK, full-time employee, after over 4 years of incredibly diligent saving, is £89,914 shy of what they’d need to mortgage an average, UK 2 bedroom house.
*Cries in minimum wage and life circumstances*
I can only dream of 80k. Fuck I’d be so happy with 30k. My god I just live in a different world to others. 😢
Remember that audience member on Question Time who was ranting and raving about Labour’s plan to tax the top 5% and about how hard-done-to he was because he was “nowhere near even the top 50% of earners… and then it turned out he was on £80k a year, putting him comfortably in the top 5% of earners? Yeah…
Lol at all the people in this thread confirming _exactly_ what this post is referring to.
For the record, the average full time UK salary is about [£31,000](https://standout-cv.com/pages/average-uk-salary#:~:text=Separate%20HMRC%20data%20shows%20that,2021%20when%20compared%20to%202020.&text=Full%2Dtime%20employed%20males%20are,averaging%20%C2%A35%2C109%20each%20year). If you’re on 60, 70, 80k a year and you think you’re only “doing okay” you are _exactly_ the kind of person this article is talking about.
This is another one of these pieces written to make the poor people see the people in the 50-100k earnings bracket as the ultimate evil and deflect from the actual rich knobheads robbing peoples corpses.