ASHE Wednesday

I do like my stats, and today there is a report out from the Office for National Statistics' Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE).

According to ASHE, the "mean" gross annual earnings across all employee jobs in 2008 came to £26,020. The figure for full-time employees is £31,323. The "median" gross annual earnings for all employee jobs was the more modest figure of £20,801, and for just full-time employees, the median rises to £25,123.

A gross annual salary of £31,759 - measured across all jobs - puts you into the top 25%.

£44,881 puts you into the top 10%, and a gross annual salary of £58,917 gets you into the top 5%.

For the top 1% you need to be making a gross salary of £118,027.

Of course, in reality it's not as straightforward as this because the ASHE is a sample of 1% of people who pay tax via PAYE. It doesn't include the self-employed - businessmen, contractors etc - who make up the ranks of the really wealthy, but for someone like me, it does provide some general goals.

Of course, these are gross figures, so when comparing them to net profits from gambling, the zero tax on the latter needs to be taken into account as does the fact that I regularly spend more than 35 hours a week trading! Not next week though.

So, very approximately, taking 33% off for taxes, NI etc, you would need to make the following per day from betting to be at the following levels:

Median: £38
Mean: £48
Top 25%: £58
Top 10%: £82
Top 5%: £108
Top 1%: £216