The Datum Report

Occupation 9121 · Elementary occupations

Groundworkers

Half of full-time groundworkers in the UK earn more than £37,925 a year, and half earn less.

Groundworkers prepare construction sites for building work by digging out and levelling the ground and laying concrete foundations, installing pipes and drainage and building paths, roads and driveways.

How people enter it

No academic qualifications are required. Training is typically provided on-the-job. Vocational qualifications in Ground Works Operations at level 2 and apprenticeships are available.

What the work involves

• mark out site area set up the construction site
• prepares site and lays concrete for shallow foundations and fabricates steel cages
• installs drainage and pipes and redirects waterways away from site
• builds paths, roads, kerbs and footpaths, using flagstones, paving and tarmac

Also called

Drainage worker · Ground worker (building construction) · Trench digger

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for groundworkers, 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. 10 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

Elementary construction occupations n.e.c.