Moving from the UK to Australia for better pay is one of the most common career plans in Britain, and most of the UK vs Australia salaries quoted online come from job adverts and recruitment sites. We took a different route: we matched 24 occupations across the two countries’ official earnings surveys and compared what a full-time worker actually earns, before and after tax. The result is clear. In 23 of the 24 jobs, the typical Australian worker takes home more than their British counterpart, and the median gap after tax is 27%.
But the headline hides the more interesting finding. Australia doesn’t pay everyone more by the same amount: it pays trades and care work dramatically more, and graduate professions only slightly more. For a bricklayer, the after-tax gap is 76%. For a pharmacist, there is no gap at all.
| Job | Australia (A$ a year) | UK (£ a year) | Australia in £ | After tax: Australia (£) | After tax: UK (£) | After-tax gap | Gap per hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bricklayer | A$120,484 | £33,030 | £63,412 | £48,109 | £27,301 | +76% | +67% |
| Aged and disability carer | A$91,572 | £27,468 | £48,195 | £37,762 | £23,297 | +62% | +80% |
| Electrician | A$113,932 | £39,647 | £59,963 | £45,765 | £32,065 | +43% | +51% |
| Plasterer | A$95,732 | £34,016 | £50,385 | £39,251 | £28,011 | +40% | — |
| Paramedic | A$148,304 | £53,818 | £78,054 | £57,576 | £41,772 | +38% | +44% |
| Plumber | A$103,480 | £37,881 | £54,462 | £42,024 | £30,794 | +36% | +36% |
| Carpenter | A$91,520 | £34,014 | £48,168 | £37,744 | £28,010 | +35% | +39% |
| Registered nurse | A$113,984 | £43,078 | £59,991 | £45,783 | £34,536 | +33% | +32% |
| Air-con and refrigeration mechanic | A$109,200 | £41,166 | £57,473 | £44,071 | £33,159 | +33% | +41% |
| Truck / HGV driver | A$101,920 | £39,905 | £53,641 | £41,466 | £32,251 | +29% | +36% |
| Social worker | A$112,944 | £44,550 | £59,443 | £45,411 | £35,596 | +28% | +29% |
| Radiographer | A$122,720 | £48,439 | £64,589 | £48,910 | £38,396 | +27% | +28% |
| Primary school teacher | A$115,752 | £45,939 | £60,921 | £46,416 | £36,596 | +27% | +12% |
| Secondary school teacher | A$120,744 | £47,632 | £63,549 | £48,203 | £37,815 | +27% | +16% |
| Welder | A$87,776 | £35,344 | £46,197 | £36,404 | £28,967 | +26% | +37% |
| Chef | A$73,996 | £30,010 | £38,945 | £31,472 | £25,127 | +25% | +33% |
| Software developer | A$131,924 | £56,914 | £69,433 | £52,204 | £43,568 | +20% | +19% |
| Midwife | A$109,928 | £46,990 | £57,856 | £44,332 | £37,352 | +19% | +17% |
| Civil engineer | A$115,284 | £51,366 | £60,675 | £46,248 | £40,350 | +15% | +25% |
| Physiotherapist | A$98,176 | £43,532 | £51,671 | £40,126 | £34,863 | +15% | +16% |
| Motor mechanic | A$84,344 | £37,458 | £44,391 | £35,175 | £30,489 | +15% | +22% |
| Painter and decorator | A$71,708 | £32,763 | £37,741 | £30,653 | £27,109 | +13% | +13% |
| Accountant | A$104,156 | £50,062 | £54,818 | £42,266 | £39,564 | +7% | +7% |
| Pharmacist | A$101,712 | £53,772 | £53,532 | £41,391 | £41,745 | -1% | +2% |
Full-time medians. Australia: ABS Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours, May 2025, published by Jobs and Skills Australia (weekly earnings × 52). UK: ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, April 2025, full-time employees. After-tax figures for a single employee with no other income, using 2026–27 rates in both countries (UK figures for England, Wales and Northern Ireland). Converted at the European Central Bank reference rate of 5 October 2026. UK figures for bricklayers and plasterers come from small samples, and the Australian bricklayer group includes stonemasons.
The real pattern: Australia flattens the gap between trades and degrees
The clearest way to see what is going on is to compare each job with the typical full-time salary in its own country. In the UK, a bricklayer earns about 15% less than the national full-time median, while a pharmacist earns 38% more. In Australia, the same bricklayer earns 25% above the national median and the pharmacist only 6% above it. Put the two jobs side by side and the ranking flips: in Britain a pharmacist out-earns a bricklayer by 63%, while in Australia the bricklayer earns about 18% more than the pharmacist.
The same thing happens across the table. Electricians, plumbers, carpenters, plasterers and air-conditioning mechanics all sit higher up the Australian pay ladder than the British one, while accountants, civil engineers, physiotherapists and software developers sit lower. That is why the after-tax gap ranges from +76% for bricklayers and +62% for aged and disability carers down to +7% for accountants and −1% for pharmacists. If you work with your hands, the move pays far better than if you work at a desk.
Calculate your own UK vs Australia pay
The table compares typical workers, but your own result depends on where you sit on the pay scale today. The calculator below starts from your job and your current UK salary rather than from the national median.
It works in three steps. First, it measures how your salary compares with the full-time median for your occupation in the UK: an electrician earning £45,000, for example, is about 13% above the UK median of £39,647. Second, it places you at the same point on the Australian scale, which for that electrician means about A$129,300 a year. Third, it applies each country’s 2026–27 income tax and payroll deductions to both salaries and converts the Australian result into pounds at A$1.90 to £1, so the two take-home figures can be compared directly.
UK vs Australia Pay Calculator
Pick your job and enter your UK salary to see what the same role pays in Australia, before and after tax, on official earnings data.
| UK | Australia |
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How it works: we place you at the same point relative to typical pay for your job. If you earn 10% above the UK median for your occupation, we compare you with someone earning 10% above the Australian median. Medians are for full-time employees: Australia from the ABS Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours (May 2025), the UK from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (2025). Tax uses 2026–27 rules for a single employee with no other income (UK figures for England, Wales and Northern Ireland). Australian pay is converted at A$1.90 to £1 (ECB, 5 October 2026). Superannuation is paid by the employer on top of salary. Not included: student loans, pension contributions, the Medicare Levy Surcharge, state or regional pay differences and visa costs.
How to read your result
Take that electrician on £45,000. In the UK they keep about £35,920 a year after income tax and National Insurance, or £2,993 a month. On the equivalent Australian salary they would keep about A$97,400, worth roughly £51,270, or £4,272 a month: a gap of around £15,350 a year, or 43%. The calculator then adjusts that gap for Australia’s higher prices using OECD figures, and shows the superannuation an Australian employer would pay on top of salary.
Two things deserve a second look before you treat the result as a decision. The first is hours: the calculator shows how many hours a full-time worker in your job typically works each week in Australia, and in many trades that is several hours more than in the UK, so weigh the extra pay against the extra time. The second is location. The medians are national figures, and pay in Perth or a mining region can sit well above them, while rent in Sydney can absorb a large share of the gain. Visa costs, the time it takes to have UK qualifications recognised and the weeks without income while you move are not included at all, and for many people they decide whether the first year actually pays off.
Why Australian trades pay so well
Three things push manual and care work up the Australian pay scale. The first is the award system: industry awards, legally binding pay scales set by the Fair Work Commission, fix the minimum rate for each grade of worker in most industries, so the floor for a qualified tradesperson is set nationally rather than left to each employer, and enterprise agreements negotiated on top of it usually sit higher still. The floor underneath them is high too. From 1 July 2026 the national minimum wage is A$26.44 an hour, against £12.71 for the UK’s National Living Wage, and the gap is wider at the trade level than at the minimum.
The second is demand. Housing construction, infrastructure and the resources sector have kept skilled trades in short supply for years, and many of the occupations at the top of this table appear on Australia’s skills shortage lists. The third is hours, which is the part most comparisons leave out.
Part of the gap is longer weeks
Australian full-timers in many trades work longer weeks than their UK counterparts. Australian electricians average about 45 hours a week, truck drivers 49, against 40 and 48 paid hours in the UK. So some of the annual gap is simply more hours worked. To check how much, we compared median full-time hourly pay as well. The Australian advantage shrinks for some jobs and grows for others, but it does not disappear: hourly pay is higher in Australia in all 23 occupations where both countries publish an hourly figure, with a median gap of 29%.
The biggest exception to the “longer weeks” rule is mining and resources work, where 12-hour shifts on fly-in fly-out rosters push average weeks past 60 hours. That is a different trade-off, and we cover it in a separate guide.
What the comparison leaves out
Three things change the picture, and all of them matter more than the exact percentage in the table.
Retirement savings. Australian salaries are quoted before superannuation, which employers pay on top at 12% of ordinary earnings. In the UK, the legal minimum employer pension contribution is 3% of qualifying earnings. None of this is included in the table, so on total pay the Australian advantage is larger than shown.
Cost of living. Australia is more expensive than the exchange rate suggests. Using the OECD’s purchasing-power figures for nurses’ pay, prices in Australia work out about 8% higher relative to the UK than the market exchange rate implies. Adjusting for that, the after-tax gap for a nurse falls from 33% to about 23%, for an electrician from 43% to about 32%, and accountants and pharmacists end up slightly worse off than in the UK. Housing is the big variable: rents in Sydney and Melbourne can absorb a large share of the difference, while regional cities and mining towns change the maths again.
The exchange rate. Every sterling figure here uses A$1.90 to the pound. A 10% move in the currency shifts every percentage in the table by roughly 10 points, without anyone’s pay changing. The Australian-dollar and pound figures are the ones to rely on; the conversion is there to make them comparable.
How we built the comparison
Each occupation is matched between the Australian classification (ANZSCO) and the UK one (SOC 2020) at the four-digit level, using the closest equivalent group: for example, Australia’s “Electricians” with the UK’s “Electricians and electrical fitters”, or “Registered Nurses” with “Nursing professionals”. Both figures are medians for full-time employees, collected in spring 2025, so the comparison is like for like in timing and in who is counted. Self-employed workers are excluded in both countries, which matters most in trades where many people work for themselves.
After-tax pay applies each country’s income tax and payroll deductions to the median salary: income tax, the Medicare levy and the Low Income Tax Offset in Australia; income tax and National Insurance in the UK. Student loans, pension contributions, salary sacrifice and state-level differences are left out, so treat the after-tax figures as a like-for-like baseline rather than a payslip. You can run your own figures through our Australian take-home pay calculator and our UK take-home pay calculator.
Frequently asked questions
Do you earn more in Australia than in the UK?
In almost every occupation, yes. Comparing official full-time medians, the typical worker earns more in Australia in 23 of 24 jobs after tax, with a median gap of 27%. The gap is largest in trades and care work and smallest in graduate professions such as accounting and pharmacy.
Which jobs gain the most from moving to Australia?
Bricklayers (+76% after tax), aged and disability carers (+62%), electricians (+43%), plasterers (+40%) and paramedics (+38%) show the largest gaps. Pharmacists (−1%) and accountants (+7%) show the smallest.
Is the higher pay cancelled out by the cost of living?
Partly, not entirely. On OECD purchasing-power figures, prices in Australia are about 8% higher relative to the UK than the exchange rate implies, which trims roughly ten percentage points off most gaps. Housing in Sydney and Melbourne can take more, but most occupations remain better paid in Australia after adjusting.
Do these figures include superannuation?
No. Australian employers pay superannuation on top of salary at 12% of ordinary earnings, against a 3% minimum employer contribution in the UK. Including it would widen the gap further.
For the full picture on each country, see our guides to the average salary in Australia and the average salary in the UK, or compare nursing pay across a wider set of countries in our ranking of which country pays nurses the most. The underlying data come from Jobs and Skills Australia and the Office for National Statistics.