Country reference
United Kingdom work permits and salary thresholds
Photo: Ilya Grigorik · CC BY-SA 3.0
Skilled Worker visa
The UK's main work route. The general salary requirement is £41,700 a year, with £33,400 available in limited circumstances outside healthcare and education. But the number that decides your case is whichever is higher: that threshold, or the going rate for your occupation code — so an offer comfortably above £41,700 can still be refused.
Salary threshold by year
- Standard
- £41,700
- Reduced criterion
- £33,400
What the amount is:Per year — but the threshold is only half of the test. You must be paid whichever is HIGHER: this figure, or the published going rate for your specific occupation code. An offer above £41,700 can still fail if the going rate for that job is higher.
Does your offer clear the threshold?
The comparison runs in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, stored or logged. It checks your figure against the published threshold — it is not a tax calculation and not advice.
Conditions
- A job offer from an employer holding a Home Office sponsor licence.
- A certificate of sponsorship from that employer.
- An eligible occupation code, and pay at or above both the threshold and the going rate for it.
- Different salary rules apply in healthcare and education, where national pay scales are used instead.
- The threshold is a ladder, not a number. The rules set five general options, each pairing its own floor with its own share of the going rate: £41,700 with the full going rate; £37,500 with 90% of it for a relevant PhD; £33,400 with 80% for a PhD in a STEM subject; £33,400 with the full rate for a job on the Immigration Salary List; and £33,400 with 70% for someone at the start of their career. A qualification or career stage moves both numbers at once, not just one.
- Separate, lower floors exist outside that ladder — £25,000 with the full going rate for listed health and education occupations, and one option reserved for prison service officers. They are restricted by occupation code, so they are not a general discount.
- Salary means guaranteed basic gross pay, and almost nothing else. The rules exclude pay that varies with fluctuating hours, shift and overtime pay, bonuses — explicitly whether or not they are guaranteed — employer pension and national insurance, allowances of any kind including accommodation and cost of living, benefits in kind such as equity, health insurance, school fees, a company car or food, one-off payments such as a golden hello, and reimbursement of immigration costs.
- That exclusion list is worth comparing across borders. Employer-paid health insurance counts towards the Irish permit threshold and counts for nothing towards the British one. The same benefit, two countries, opposite answers — which is why a package that clears one bar can miss the other while looking identical on paper.
Photo: David Dixon · CC BY-SA 2.0
Is that threshold actually high?
A salary threshold means nothing on its own. Here it is next to what people in the country are actually paid, using official statistics you can check yourself.
1.19× the median full-time wage. That is what the visa threshold asks for.
- Median full-time pay (2023)
- £34,963 a year
- Full-time employees, all sectors, gross annual pay (ONS ASHE).
- Average full-time pay (2023)
- £42,210 a year
- Full-time employees, all sectors, gross annual pay (ONS ASHE).
Earnings figures come from the Eurostat structure of earnings survey, which runs every four years — the latest period available is shown next to each figure. Minimum wages are published twice a year and are current.
The ratio compares the current threshold with the most recent earnings survey, so the two figures are from different years. Treat it as an order of magnitude, not a precise multiple.
Photo: Andrew Colin · CC BY 2.0
More about United Kingdom
- The UK going rate: why the published threshold may not apply to you
The Skilled Worker route has two salary tests, and the one everybody quotes is often the one that does not bind.
- Moving from the United Kingdom to the Netherlands
- Moving from the United Kingdom to Germany
Quoting a figure from this page
Every number here is checked against the authority that publishes it, on the date shown. Those numbers change without announcement — one on this site was correct for three months and then quietly was not. So if you quote a figure, quote the date with it, and check the source before you rely on it.
Career Space, “United Kingdom work permits and salary thresholds”. Checked 2026-08-11. https://career-space.com/en/visa/united-kingdom
Sources
- 01Skilled Worker visa: your jobGOV.UK — Home Office ·
- 02Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, Table 25: region by public and private sectorOffice for National Statistics ·
Every figure here comes from an official source and carries the date we checked it. How we work with data.
This page is information, not advice. We are not an employer, a recruitment agency, a visa centre or an immigration adviser, and we are not affiliated with any government body. Rules change — confirm against the official source before you act.