Real Wage

City guide · Figures as of 23 Oct 2026

What a job in London really pays per hour

At the typical local salary of £49,692, a full-time office job you reach by public transit pays £14.83 for each hour it actually takes, not the £25.48 the salary suggests. Done fully remotely, the same job pays £19.76 an hour.

Try it with your own numbers

The local figures

Typical salary£49,692 a year (median full-time pay for London workplaces, April 2025)
Effective tax rate20.9% at that salary
Public transit£7.20 a day in Zone 1–2 peak Tube fares, 100 minutes round trip
Driving£20.90 a day in fuel & congestion charge, plus £26.00 parking; 70 minutes round trip
Other job costsAbout £40 a week at five office days and £15 when remote (estimates)

Every figure is sourced at the bottom of this page.

Four ways to do the same job

The same salary and 37.5 paid hours a week, with no unpaid overtime. Only where you work and how you get there change.

SetupReal hourly wageJob costs a yearCommuting a year
Office five days, by transit£14.83£3,952433 hours
Office five days, by car£11.11£14,274303 hours
Office two days, by transit£17.55£2,049173 hours
Fully remote£19.76£7800 hours

Commuting by transit five days a week costs £1,872 a year in fares and takes 433 hours, about 54 eight-hour days. Going in two days a week instead gives back 260 hours and lifts the real wage to £17.55.

Driving instead of taking transit costs £10,322 more a year and gives back 130 hours, so the real wage by car is lower: £11.11 against £14.83 by transit.

What an office job here has to pay

For a five-day office job reached by transit to pay as much per hour as a fully remote job at £49,692, it would need a salary of about £64,526: £14,834, or 30%, more. By car, it would need about £74,328.

This uses the same effective tax rate for both salaries. Extra salary is usually taxed at a higher marginal rate, so the real break-even is somewhat higher. How the break-even salary works.

Where these numbers come from

Figures are in GBP. Round-trip times are average one-way commutes doubled. Driving assumes 14.4 miles each way at 27.2 miles per gallon unless noted. The methodology explains the method and its limits.

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