The Datum Report

Occupation 4111 · Administrative and secretarial occupations

National government administrative occupations

Half of full-time national government administrative occupations in the UK earn more than £33,000 a year, and half earn less.

National government administrative occupations undertake a variety of administrative and clerical duties in national government departments, and in local offices of national government departments.

How people enter it

Entry is possible to junior grades within this group with GCSEs/S grades, and/or relevant practical experience higher grades require A levels/H grades or equivalent, although many entrants are graduates. NVQs/SVQs, apprenticeships and professional qualifications are available for certain areas of work.

What the work involves

• assists senior government officers with policy work, external liaison or general administrative work
• undertakes administrative duties specific to the operation of HM Revenue and Customs offices, Job Centres, Benefits Agency offices and other local offices of national government
• maintains and updates correspondence, documents, data and other records for storage in files or on computer
• classifies, sorts and files publications, correspondence etc. in offices and libraries
• responds to telephone enquiries and other forms of correspondence
• performs miscellaneous clerical tasks such as proof reading printed material, drafting letters, taking minutes etc

Also called

Administrative assistant (courts of justice) · Administrative officer (government) · Civil servant (grades AA, AO & EO) · Clerk (government) · Revenue officer (government)

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for national government administrative occupations, 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

Local government administrative occupations · Officers of non-governmental organisations