- Survey asked Britons how much they’d need to earn to feel wealthy
- Average amount is almost triple the average wage
- Scots had the highest bar while those in Yorkshire set their sights lower
You need to earn nearly £100,000 per year in order to be considered rich, a survey claims… but to be ‘comfortable’ you need just over the average wage in the UK.
Earning £96,000 is the magic amount that would make the average person feel wealthy, according to a study carried out by recruiter Indeed.
But 8.6 per cent had a higher bar, saying that they would need to earn £201,000 or more to be classed as rich – while 6.7 per cent said they would feel well-off with a salary of less than £20,000.
Regional variation: People in Scotland say that in order to be wealthy you need to earn more than £106,520, while those in Yorkshire and Humber say £86,376 is enough
Combined households need earnings of more than £115,500 per year in order to be classed as well-off, according to an average calculated from the responses.
The data also showed that the income level someone classes as being ‘wealthy’ increases in line with their own earnings.
For example, those in households already earning over £100,000 believed that a household needed £165,500 on average in order to qualify as wealthy.
Meanwhile, of those earning less than £15,000, 22 per cent said a salary of £20,000 makes you well off.
What is the average UK wage?
In reality, an individual salary of £100,000 would place someone well into the top five per cent of earners in the UK.
The average salary for a full-time worker in 2023 was £34,963, according to the Office for National Statistics, while minimum wage is £23,795 for a 40-hour working week.
Surprisingly, the benchmark for being wealthy was viewed as highest in Scotland, where £106,520 was the average salary deemed to make someone well-off, while in London this figure was £103,420 and was £100,930 in Northern Ireland.
In comparison, those in Yorkshire and the Humber said you need to earn just £86,380 to be classed as rich, while people in the South West said earning more than £87,250 would make you wealthy.
However, to afford a ‘comfortable’ standard of living, respondents said you need just £38,130 per year, with almost 60 per sent of respondents saying that you need less than £40,000.
For a combined household, this figure rises to £50,280 per year, considerably less than two times the average income in the UK, which would amount to around £70,000.
More than half of those surveyed said £50,000 or less was needed for a comfortable life, rising to three quarters of respondents for £80,000 and below.
Despite the continued rise in the cost of living, one in five people have not had an increase in their salary since 2021, while those that have, have seen an average increase of just three per cent.
Jack Kennedy, senior economist at Indeed, said: ‘After grappling with the cost of living crisis for over two years, it’s no surprise that wages are front of mind for voters.
‘There’s a clear call from the British people for the elected Government to further ease financial pressures, and we’d expect this to remain front of mind for the public long after the winning party is decided.
‘Although many have been faced with pay freezes, the Indeed wage tracker shows that posted wage growth for new hires rose to a four-month high of 6.5 per cent year-on-year in May, showing that in certain sectors, there are opportunities for workers to receive higher wages.’