Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) methodology and guidance

About this article

The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) provides information about the levels, distribution and make-up of earnings and hours paid for employees within industries, occupations and regions in the UK.

The ASHE was developed to replace the New Earnings Survey (NES) in 2004.

This included improvements to the coverage of employees and imputation and weighting to account for non-response.

ASHE provides estimates for employee earnings by gender and full-time/part-time workers.

Breakdowns are also available by geographies, industrial classification, occupational classification and age groups, as well as various combinations of these.

These breakdowns are available for the following variables: gross weekly pay, weekly pay excluding overtime, basic pay including other pay, overtime pay, gross hourly pay, hourly pay excluding overtime, gross annual pay, annual incentive pay, total paid hours, basic paid hours and paid overtime hours.

ASHE is also used to produce estimates of the proportions of UK employees within workplace pension categories.

From 2005 estimates of the proportions of employees within pension contribution rate bands are also available.

ASHE is the official source of estimates for the number of jobs paid below the National Minimum Wage.

The documents below provide guidance and methodology information on ASHE.

Additional guidance and advice may be obtained from earnings@ons.gov.uk.

2004 to 2022 ASHE questionnaires
Review of distribution of earnings statistics (746 Kb Word document)