What junior doctors really earn

How much money do junior doctors really earn? If you’ve been listening to the British Medical Association – the trade union which represents junior doctors – this week you will have seen comparisons made between their salaries and the wages of Pret A Manger employees. The union talks about members having to ‘cut back on food and heat to pay bills’. To think of notoriously overworked junior doctors in such circumstances is outrageous. But how typical is that scenario of those demanding a 35 per cent pay rise?

First-year junior doctors are still some of the better-paid workers in Britain, and this is only the jumping-off point

A doctor can be classified as ‘junior’ for years, depending on what type of medicine they practise. Being stuck on a salary of roughly £29,000 per year – the lowest rung on the pay scale – would surely be an injustice, not least because of the unsociable hours and inevitable stress that the job demands. But that isn’t happening, not even for junior doctors in their first year on the job.

The latest figures, for last year, show a typical doctor in their first year of work for NHS England is paid just more than £37,000. This combines the basic pay rate with non-basic pay fees (including working unsociable hours), and adds up to thousands more than the average UK worker is paid. Average earnings for a Foundation Year 2 doctor were just over £43,000 in the same fiscal year, more than £10,000 higher than the average salary.

Is this a banker-level salary? No. But at these levels, first-year junior doctors are still some of the better-paid workers in Britain. And this is only the jumping-off point for doctors’ pay. Get through those first years, and a junior doctor’s pay, based on the latest set of data, approaches double the average wage: doctors classified as being in ‘core training’ or as ‘speciality registrars’ earned, on average, just under £56,000 and £63,000 respectively last year.