The Datum Report

Occupation 2434 · Professional occupations

Business and related research professionals

Half of full-time business and related research professionals in the UK earn more than £41,128 a year, and half earn less.

Business and related research professionals carry out a variety of research activities for the broadcast and print media, for the police and armed forces intelligence services, for national security agencies and in other non-scientific areas.

How people enter it

Entrants usually possess a degree or equivalent qualification. Training is usually provided on-the-job, or support may be given for postgraduate study. Professional qualifications are available in some areas.

What the work involves

• liaises with production team to generate and develop ideas for film, television and radio programmes
• research sources for accurate factual material, finds suitable contributors to programmes or print features and deals with any copyright issues
• briefs presenters, scriptwriters or journalists as required via verbal or written reports
• provides administrative support for programme development such as booking facilities
• provides support to criminal intelligence or to military or other security operations by gathering and verifying intelligence data and sources
• presents findings in the required format, via written reports or presentations
• researches images for clients in a wide range of media using specialist picture libraries and archives, museums, galleries etc., or commissions new images
• liaises with client on the appropriate image/s to be used
• deals with copyright issues and negotiates fees
• liaises with client to understand their market research needs, establishes an appropriate quantitative and qualitative market research methodology and prepares proposals outlining programmes of work and details of costs
• manages and directs research, collates and interprets findings and presents results to clients
• discusses possible changes that need to be made in terms of design, price, packaging, marketing and promotion etc. in light of market research with appropriate departments

Also called

Crime analyst · Fellow (research) · Games researcher (broadcasting) · Inventor · Digital marketing analyst · Market research analyst · Social media analyst

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for business and related research professionals, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 11 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Actuaries, economists and statisticians · Business, research and administrative professionals n.e.c. · Management consultants and business analysts · Marketing and commercial managers · Professional/chartered company secretaries