Real hourly pay by commute length, UK median earner
This is the core of the dataset. It takes the UK median full-time salary of £39,039 (ONS, April 2025), works out the 2026/27 take-home of £31,628, then shows what each hour of the job is really worth once commute time and driving cost are added in. A worker with no commute earns £18.33 an hour after tax across a standard year. Every commuting row sits below that, and the gap widens fast. Distance is worked out from commute time at 24 mph and priced at HMRC's approved 55p per mile, which covers the full cost of running a car.
| Commute (each way, 5 days) |
Distance each way |
Commute hours a year |
Driving cost a year |
Real hourly pay |
Loss vs no commute |
| None (remote) | — | 0 | £0 | £18.33 | — |
| 20 minutes | 8 miles | 153 | £2,024 | £15.76 | −£2.57 |
| 30 minutes | 12 miles | 230 | £3,036 | £14.62 | −£3.71 |
| 45 minutes | 18 miles | 345 | £4,554 | £13.08 | −£5.26 |
| 60 minutes | 24 miles | 460 | £6,072 | £11.70 | −£6.64 |
| 90 minutes | 36 miles | 690 | £9,108 | £9.32 | −£9.01 |
Salary: ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025 (£39,039, April 2025). Tax and NI: HMRC 2026/27. Driving cost: HMRC approved mileage rate, 55p per mile. Distance derived from commute time at 24 mph. Based on 5 days a week over 46 working weeks.
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Free to reuse under the Open Government Licence. Please credit Salary Checker UK and link back to this page.
How to cite this data
Salary Checker UK analysis of ONS (ASHE 2025), HMRC (2026/27 tax and 55p/mile) and DfT data, September 2026. https://salarychecker.uk/true-wage-commute-cost.html
What the numbers show
The headline is the size of the drop. A 60-minute-each-way car commute, five days a week, costs the median earner £6.64 an hour in real pay, about 36% of their headline hourly rate. Put another way, more than a third of every hour that person works is quietly eaten by getting to and from the job. And that's before you count the time itself as anything other than lost.
Most UK commuters sit around the middle of the table. The Department for Transport puts the average at roughly 29 minutes each way, so the typical worker lands between the 20 and 30 minute rows, on a real hourly pay of about £14 to £15. The tail is where it gets stark. A 90-minute commute, common for people priced out to the edges of big cities, pulls the median earner down to £9.32 an hour, below the National Living Wage despite a salary well above minimum pay.
The commute costs two ways at once, and that's the point of the True Wage. There's the money, £2,024 to £9,108 a year here depending on distance, using HMRC's own per-mile figure for the true cost of driving. And there's the time, up to 690 unpaid hours a year for the longest commute, which is the equivalent of nearly 18 extra working weeks that never show up on a payslip. A remote or nearby role hands both back.
How we worked it out
The method is deliberately transparent so you can check every figure. Start with the median full-time salary of £39,039 from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (April 2025). Apply 2026/27 Income Tax and National Insurance for England: £5,294 tax and £2,118 NI, leaving take-home of £31,628. That's the money coming in.
For time, use a standard 37.5-hour week across 46 working weeks (allowing for holiday and bank holidays), which is 1,725 contracted hours a year. Add the commute: a 60-minute-each-way trip on five days is 10 hours a week, or 460 hours across the 46 weeks.
For the cost of driving, convert commute time to distance at an average 24 mph (a realistic door-to-door speed for the mixed urban and A-road driving most commutes involve), then price each mile at HMRC's approved mileage rate of 55p. That rate is the government's own figure for the full cost of running a car: fuel, servicing, insurance, road tax and depreciation, not just petrol. So a 60-minute commute is about 24 miles each way, 48 miles a day, which at 55p a mile is £26.40 a day or £6,072 across the working year.
Worked example: 60-minute-each-way commute
Take-home pay: £31,628
Distance: 24 miles each way at 24 mph, so 48 miles a day
Driving cost (48 miles × 55p × 5 days × 46 weeks): £6,072
Pay left after driving cost: £25,556
Total committed hours (1,725 contracted + 460 commuting): 2,185
Real hourly pay: £25,556 ÷ 2,185 = £11.70 an hour
Against the no-commute figure of £18.33, that's a loss of £6.64 an hour.
Two assumptions are worth naming. The 24 mph average converts time to distance; a slower city crawl means fewer miles and a smaller money cost, a faster motorway run means more. And the 55p rate assumes driving, so a rail or bus commuter would substitute their fare instead. You can put your own commute cost and unpaid overtime into the real hourly wage calculator. Everything else, the salary, the tax and the hours, is either official data or a clearly stated standard assumption.
Why this matters when you compare jobs
The reason to turn all this into one hourly figure is that it lets you compare offers fairly. A job that pays more but sits an hour away can be worth less per hour of your life than a closer role on a smaller salary. The table gives you the conversion rate: cutting a 60-minute commute to zero is worth about £6.64 an hour to the median earner, which is a big real-terms raise that no pay negotiation delivered.
It also reframes hybrid and remote work. Dropping from five office days to two removes roughly 60% of the commute penalty, both the hours and the driving cost. For someone on the median salary with a long commute, that shift alone can be worth more than a typical annual pay rise. To see the effect on your own pay, put your salary, commute and any unpaid overtime into the real hourly wage calculator, or start from your take-home on the main salary calculator.
