The Datum Report

Occupation 3211 · Associate professional occupations

Dispensing opticians

Half of full-time dispensing opticians in the UK earn more than £28,543 a year, and half earn less.

Dispensing opticians supply, fit and service spectacles, contact lenses and other optical aids in accordance with a prescription from an optician or optometrist.

How people enter it

Entry is most common with GCSEs/S grades or equivalent qualifications or experience, followed by up to three years training approved by the General Optical Council (GOC). To practice entrants must pass professional exams and register with the GOC. Full-time, day-release or distance-learning options are available.

What the work involves

• interprets prescription and measures patient’s face to determine distance between pupil centres, height of bridge of nose, etc.
• advises patient on lens type and choice of spectacle frames
• prepares detailed instructions for workshop
• ensures that completed spectacles conform to specification and fit the patient correctly and comfortably
• fits spectacles and advises patient on lens care and any other difficulties likely to be experienced

Also called

Dispensing optician · Optical dispenser

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for dispensing opticians, 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. 3 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

Complementary health associate professionals · Health associate professionals n.e.c. · Medical and dental technicians · Pharmaceutical technicians