Paper and wood machine operatives salary in the United Kingdom
£30,360GBP/YR
Paper and wood machine operatives in the United Kingdom earn a median of £30,360 a year, about £15.36 an hour.
SOURCE·Office for National Statistics — Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, Table 14·Open Government Licence v3.0·REVIEWED 2025 PROVISIONAL
What £30,360 is actually worth
Move this wage out of the United Kingdom and it converts to $40,346. Spend it where it was earned and it buys what $43,277 buys in the United States. Those are two answers to two different questions, and the distance between them is the thing worth reading — here it is a factor of 1.07.
At the exchange rate At local prices The disagreement
The hollow marker is the exchange-rate reading: what the money is worth if it leaves. The solid marker is the purchasing-power reading: what it is worth if it stays. The hatched span between them is the disagreement, and it is what every single-country salary site leaves out.
SOURCE·European Central Bank reference rates (via Frankfurter) and World Bank PPP conversion factor PA.NUS.PRVT.PP·FX 2026-07-29·REVIEWED PPP 2025
How United Kingdom arrived at this figure, and what it is not
- Office for National Statistics publishes Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, Table 14 for the reference period 2025 PROVISIONAL. We take the occupation row as released and change nothing in it.
- 1% sample of PAYE records, full-time employees
- Where the agency publishes a distribution we carry the whole distribution, because a single average throws away the part of the answer people are actually asking about.
- The wage is then read twice: converted at the European Central Bank reference rate for 2026-07-29, and divided by the World Bank purchasing-power conversion factor for GBR. Both readings are printed; neither is presented as the answer.
- Countries measure pay differently. A tax return, an employer payroll survey, a PAYE sample and a household survey are four different instruments, and gaps of a few per cent between countries are the instruments, not the wages.
converted = GBP 30,360 / FX(GBP->USD) adjusted = GBP 30,360 / PPP(GBR) disagreement = adjusted / converted
Every figure this page rests on
| Reading | GBP | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Median | £30,360 | The middle earner |
| Mean | £31,134 | Pulled up by top earners |
| 25th percentile | £26,569 | — |
| Hourly | £15.36 | Median at 38 hrs/week |
| Employed in this occupation | 11,000 | Head count in the release |
Office for National Statistics · 2025 PROVISIONAL
SOURCE·Office for National Statistics — Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, Table 14·Open Government Licence v3.0·REVIEWED 2025 PROVISIONAL
What people ask next
- How much do paper and wood machine operatives earn in the United Kingdom?
- The median is £30,360 a year, about £15.36 an hour, according to ONS, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) Table 14, 2025 provisional.
- Is that figure before or after tax?
- Before. Every figure on this page is gross pay as the statistics agency published it — income tax, social contributions and any deductions come off afterwards, and they differ enough between countries that we do not model them.
- Why is the US-dollar figure different depending on where I read it?
- Because there are two of them. £30,360 converts to $40,346 at the exchange rate on 2026-07-29, and buys what $43,277 buys in the United States once the United Kingdom's price level is accounted for. The first answers "what could I wire abroad", the second answers "how well does someone live on this".
Related occupations in the United Kingdom
- Food, drink and tobacco process operatives £28,243
- Construction operatives n.e.c. £32,446
- Assemblers and routine operatives n.e.c. £27,962
- Assemblers (vehicles and metal goods) £31,919
- Routine inspectors and testers £34,360
- Production, factory and assembly supervisors £36,777
- Assemblers (electrical and electronic products) £28,620
- Road construction operatives £38,833
- Chemical and related process operatives £33,959
- Process operatives n.e.c. £31,717
- Tyre, exhaust and windscreen fitters £30,500
- Metal working machine operatives £31,500
