The Datum Report

Occupation 5412 · Skilled trades occupations

Footwear and leather working trades

Half of full-time footwear and leather working trades in the UK earn more than £25,357 a year, and half earn less.

Footwear and leather working trades make and repair shoes, cut out, make up, sew, decorate and finish leather and leather substitute goods other than garments.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic requirements although some employers may require GCSEs/S grades. Training is mainly on?the-job. NVQs/SVQs are available in some areas.

What the work involves

• uses hand tools or machine to cut out, trim, punch holes in or stitch guide lines on leather or leather substitute component parts
• positions leather and rubber footwear component parts on lasts and shapes and joins uppers to insoles and soles
• uses hand tools or machine to make up and repair saddles, harnesses, belts, straps and other leather products
• uses hand and machine tools to sew and stitch leather and/or other material in the making and decoration of footwear and leather goods other than garments
• prepares paper or paperboard master patterns of component parts of footwear
• waxes, cleans and finishes footwear and other leather goods

Also called

Cobbler · Leather worker (leather goods mfr) · Machinist (leather goods mfr) · Shoe machinist · Shoe repairer

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for footwear and leather working trades, 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

Tailors and dressmakers · Textiles, garments and related trades n.e.c. · Upholsterers