The Datum Report

Occupation 3221 · Associate professional occupations

Youth and community workers

Half of full-time youth and community workers in the UK earn more than £32,654 a year, and half earn less.

Youth and community workers provide support to individuals or groups of individuals through a range of activities or services that aim to encourage participation in social and community life and promote personal and social development. Workers in this group also provide family support activities in the home and community, to both parents and children. They may also encourage behaviour change and participation in sport and physical activity within local communities.

How people enter it

Entrants will require a qualification accredited by the National Youth Agency at level 2 or 3. Apprenticeships are also available. Some employers may require people to be aged over 21 years of age. Background checks including a DBS check are likely to be required.

What the work involves

• organises social, recreational and educational activities in local community and youth groups
• undertakes the day-to-day running of community centres and supervises the activities of part-time and voluntary workers
• liaises and supports voluntary workers running groups in village halls, churches, mosques and other places of worship
• advises individuals with particular needs or problems through informal discussion, individual counselling or formal group discussion
• plans and delivers community sport, physical activity and health programmes, working with partner organisations to engage local residents
• helps set up credit unions, encourages parents to establish playgroups, works with other groups to find solutions to shared concerns or problems

Also called

Community development officer · Community sport and health officer · Family support worker · Youth and community worker · Youth project coordinator · Youth worker

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for youth and community workers, 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

Child and early years officers · Counsellors · Housing officers · Welfare and housing associate professionals n.e.c.