The Datum Report

Occupation 9265 · Elementary occupations

Bar staff

Half of full-time bar staff in the UK earn more than £23,182 a year, and half earn less.

Bar staff prepare, mix and serve alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks and beverages at bars in public houses, hotels, clubs and other establishments.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements. Training is typically received on-the-job. Vocational qualifications in relevant areas are available at levels 1,2 and 3.

What the work involves

• assists in keeping bar properly stocked
• washes used glassware and cleans and tidies bar area
• takes customer orders and mixes and serves drinks
• receives payment for drinks

Also called

Barmaid · Bar staff · Bartender · Glass collector (public house) · Mixologist (beverages)

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for bar staff, 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. 4 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

Bar and catering supervisors · Coffee shop workers · Hospital porters · Kitchen and catering assistants · Leisure and theme park attendants · Other elementary services occupations n.e.c. · Waiters and waitresses