Average pay in the South West

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We looked at 8,294 job adverts in the South West that show pay, taken from the Bernoullis job feed. Here are the key figures:

• Median advertised pay in the South West: £37,500 a year. This is the middle salary, with half of adverts paying more and half paying less.
• Mean (average) advertised pay: £47,700 a year. It is higher than the median because a smaller number of very well-paid roles pull it up.
• Compared with the UK: in line with the UK figure of £37,500, putting the South West 4th of the 12 UK nations and regions.
• Best-paid job type: legal, at a median of £58,500.
• Lowest-paid job type: hospitality and catering, at a median of £26,400.

How we got these figures

Bernoullis runs its own job feed. Every night it collects public UK job adverts from employer careers sites, the NHS, councils, schools and job boards. On 2 November 2026 the feed held 152,833 live adverts. About 56% of them showed pay and a location, and those are the ones we used.

• Where an advert gave a pay range, we used the midpoint. Where it gave one figure, we used that.
• Hourly rates were turned into a yearly figure based on 37.5 hours a week for 52 weeks. Day rates were multiplied by 225 working days, weekly pay by 52 and monthly pay by 12.
• We left out figures below £12,000 or above £250,000 a year, as these are usually part-time roles, typing errors or bonus figures.
• Each advert was placed in a region using its map location, so these figures cover jobs based in the South West.

These are advertised salaries, so they show what employers are offering right now. They are not the same as what people already in work earn. For that, the Office for National Statistics publishes its Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings. Teaching adverts are left out of the job-type table below because they mix national pay scales in ways that make a single figure misleading.

Average pay by job type in the South West

Median advertised yearly pay for each type of job with at least 30 adverts showing pay in the South West.

Job type	Median advertised pay	Adverts with pay
Legal	£58,500	418
Construction and civil engineering	£55,500	200
Controls, automation and robotics	£53,500	49
Electrical and electronics engineering	£50,500	47
Management and operations	£50,000	498
Energy and utilities	£45,000	33
Finance and accounting	£44,000	676
IT, software and data	£42,500	448
Science and research	£42,300	55
Mechanical and design engineering	£40,000	124
Sales and business development	£37,500	348
Healthcare and care	£36,500	1,244
Manufacturing and production	£36,000	321
Skilled trades and technicians	£36,000	379
HR and recruitment	£33,500	190
Marketing and communications	£33,000	43
Logistics, warehouse and driving	£31,200	423
Admin and office	£28,000	362
Customer service	£27,000	94
Security and facilities	£26,800	120
Retail	£26,600	156
Hospitality and catering	£26,400	109

How the South West compares with the rest of the UK

1. London: £42,500
2. The South East: £38,000
3. The North West: £37,500
4. The South West: £37,500
5. The West Midlands: £37,000
6. Wales: £36,500
7. The East of England: £36,000
8. Scotland: £36,000
9. Yorkshire and the Humber: £35,200
10. The East Midlands: £35,000
11. Northern Ireland: £34,500
12. The North East: £34,100

The UK median across all 77,877 adverts we used was £37,500, and the mean was £47,800.

What this means if you are looking for work

Use these figures as a starting point when you look at a job offer or ask for a pay rise in the South West. Pay within each job type still varies a lot with experience, qualifications, shift patterns and the size of the employer. If an advert for a role like yours is well below the median above, it is worth asking why before you apply.

If you are applying for better-paid roles, make sure your CV shows the skills those adverts ask for. Our free CV checker scores your CV against a job description, and our job seeker tools can help you find roles that match your experience.

What this means for employers

If you are hiring in the South West, candidates will compare your offer with others they can see. An offer below the local median for the role can mean fewer applications and a longer time to fill. Showing pay in your advert helps too, as around 44% of the adverts in our feed did not.

Not sure what to offer? Our fair pay checker shows what employers should pay for a role near you, based on similar live adverts.

Bernoullis recruits for employers across the UK. Get in touch to talk about a role and what it should pay.

Figures from the Bernoullis job feed, based on adverts collected up to 2 November 2026.