The Datum Report

Occupation 9211 · Elementary occupations

Postal workers, mail sorters and messengers

Half of full-time postal workers, mail sorters and messengers in the UK earn more than £31,677 a year, and half earn less.

Postal workers, mail sorters and messengers collect, receive, sort and deliver mail, documents, correspondence or messages, either between or within establishments.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements. Entrants complete short induction courses followed by a programme of Off and on-the-job training.

What the work involves

• collects and may x-ray mail from post boxes, receives parcels, and collects correspondence, documents and other material from individuals, offices or other establishments
• sorts mail, parcels and other incoming and outgoing material for delivery, and maintains records of material received and despatched
• delivers mail, parcels, correspondence and other materials to specified or agreed routes and schedules
• completes delivery forms, collects charges, and issues receipts for the collection and delivery of registered or recorded mail and other items

Also called

Leaflet distributor · Mail sorter · Messenger · Paper boy · Paper girl · Postman · Postwoman

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for postal workers, mail sorters and messengers, 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

Elementary administration occupations n.e.c.