The Datum Report

Occupation 5231 · Skilled trades occupations

Vehicle technicians, mechanics and electricians

Half of full-time vehicle technicians, mechanics and electricians in the UK earn more than £37,458 a year, and half earn less.

Vehicle technicians, mechanics and electricians diagnose, maintain, repair and test mechanical, electrical and electronic systems in light vehicles, heavy goods vehicles, buses and coaches, motorcycles and specialist vehicles.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements, although some employers may require GCSEs/S grades or an equivalent qualification. Training is undertaken Off and on-the-job. Apprenticeships at NVQ/SVQ levels 2 and 3 are available and take three to four years to complete.

What the work involves

• visually checks, test drives or uses test equipment to diagnose engine and mechanical faults
• removes, dismantles, repairs and replaces defective parts and prepares new parts using appropriate tools
• reassembles, tests, adjusts and tunes the appropriate parts, systems or entire engine
• carries out routine maintenance checks on oil and air filters, brakes and other vehicle parts/systems
• diagnoses faults in electrical/electronic circuitry, removes faulty components and fits replacements
• checks condition of electrical/electronic systems and carries out servicing tasks
• installs additional electrical amenities such as radio/CD players, aerials
• repairs and services air conditioning, heating and engine-cooling systems
• perform repairs, tests and maintenance to roadside vehicles

Also called

Auto electrician · Car mechanic · HGV mechanic · Mechanic (garage) · MOT tester · Motor mechanic · Motor vehicle technician · Technician (vehicles) · Vehicle technician · Roadside Technician (motor vehicles)

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for vehicle technicians, mechanics and electricians, 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

Aircraft maintenance and related trades · Boat and ship builders and repairers · Rail and rolling stock builders and repairers · Vehicle body builders and repairers · Vehicle paint technicians