Earnings Survey
The annual Earnings Survey is compulsory under the Statistics Act 1999 and collects information on individuals’ gross earnings and hours of work.
Individuals are randomly selected from Income Tax records and forms are sent to the last known employer. The questionnaire asks for details of the employee's sex, date of birth, industry, hours of work along with basic pay, overtime and incentive payments. The pay period refers to mid June and the deadline for submission is September. There is a financial penalty for non-response.
The results are released in a form that does not allow for individuals to be identified. Average earnings of full time employees are calculated, the distribution of earnings is illustrated, Isle of Man salaries compared with the UK are highlighted and the private and public sector are compared.
The survey is of gross earnings before deductions of income tax and national insurance. Gross earnings include overtime, shift premia and payment by results in addition to basic pay.
Summary of Results – Isle of Man Earnings Survey 2023
- Median gross weekly pay of full-time employees was £732, compared to £673 in 2022
- Although both average and median weekly earnings have increased in nominal terms compared to 2022, average weekly earnings at constant prices remains below the ten year high from 2017 and have fallen slightly compared with the previous year (from £927 to £902). There is however considerable overlap between margins of error in the estimates of average weekly pay for previous years, raising the possibility that differences in the data between successive years are artefacts resulting from the sampling process
- Full-time employees worked an average of 37.6 hours per week, similar to the 37.7 hours per week recording in 2022. This includes 0.7 hours of overtime
- Overtime, incentive pay and shift premiums made up 5.7% of employees' gross weekly earnings, up from 5.3% in 2021
- Median earnings were 7.3% higher than the median United Kingdom
- 15.6% of employees in 2023 earned less than the Isle of Man Living Wage, down from an estimated 16.9% in 2022, and 1.6% of employees earned less than the Minimum Wage, down from 4.5% in 2022
- 74% of the randomly selected sample worked full time, 16% worked part time and 10% had zero contracted hours
