The Datum Report

Occupation 3542 · Associate professional occupations

Importers and exporters

Half of full-time importers and exporters in the UK earn more than £34,757 a year, and half earn less.

Importers and exporters buy commodities from overseas for the home market and sell home-produced commodities to overseas markets.

How people enter it

Entry does not depend on academic qualifications although some employers require candidates to have a degree or equivalent qualification. Some posts require candidates to have knowledge of a foreign language. Professional qualifications are available. Entrance to professional examinations requires GCSEs/S grades and A levels/H grades or equivalent qualifications.

What the work involves

• investigates and evaluates home and overseas demand for commodities
• obtains orders from buyers and arranges payment by bill of exchange, letter of credit or other means
• arranges for shipment of commodities overseas and ensures that insurance and export licences are in order
• carries out customs clearance procedures for imports, arranges their storage and delivery and sells them personally or through a commodity broker
• advises home and overseas producers on the likely future demand for their goods

Also called

Export coordinator · Exporter · Import agent · Importer · Shipping agent

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for importers and exporters, 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. 0 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

Business associate professionals n.e.c. · Data analysts · Estimators, valuers and assessors · Project support officers