30 March 2023
The Statistics Office has today released new estimates of average incomes from full-time employment for the 2021/22 financial year, together with revised estimates for previous years. The estimated median annual before-tax wage was £9,460, a decrease of 1.5% compared to the previous year when price inflation is taken into account.
Median annual before-tax wages from full-time employment, 2013/14 to 2021/22, in constant 2021/22 prices (i.e. adjusted for price inflation).
The median is the usual measure of average incomes or wages, because it is less sensitive than the mean to small numbers of relatively high wage earners in a population. A median wage level estimate of £9,460 means that, for 2021/22, half of all full-time employees had before-tax wages that were less than £9,460, and half had before-tax wages that were estimated to be higher.
The estimates are derived from records maintained by the Income Tax Office. For this release, the methodology has been improved, and new series have been added to the dataset: median wages by industry and occupational group, adjusted for inflation, from 2013/14 to 2021/22.
Please note that the revised estimates for previous years using the improved methodology are not comparable with those estimates issued in previous Bulletins. Only incomes from employment above the minimum wage are included; any income from self-employment, investment, and pensions is excluded where possible. Incomes of persons employed by the Government of St Helena following international recruitment (i.e. Technical Cooperation Officers) are not considered typical and so are also excluded from the statistics on wages.
More detailed statistics on incomes, including the differences between lower and higher paid employees, between men and women, and between persons working in different industries and performing different occupations are available in the latest Statistical Bulletin, found on the St Helena Government website at www.sainthelena.gov.sh/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/230315_StatsBulletin_02_2023_Wages-1.pdf. Detailed data can be accessed in Excel format from the ‘Incomes’ file in the Economy section of www.sainthelena.gov.sh/st-helena/statistics/the-economy/.