Attainability Index

Executive Summary

Being able to afford the goods and services that let people take part in society – what this report calls ‘attainability’ – is central to feeling like a full participant in it today.

Years of weak wage growth and rising prices have put people’s ability to attain the things that matter under increasing strain. A ‘cost of living crisis’ has settled into an often-unaffordable ‘new normal’. A broader set of goods and services has also become harder to afford, in ways that matter to people’s lives. The ability to pay for a night out, a holiday, a new car, or a new outfit, are all important to taking a full part in society.

Our new Attainability Index offers a new way to look at the ‘time price’ of the things people buy, by asking a simple question: how many hours does someone need to work to afford them, after paying for life’s essentials? It combines two tested approaches: time prices and the residual income approach to living standards. Measuring prices this way gives the cost of living debate a more relatable vocabulary than abstract, economy-wide measures of wage growth and price changes.

Workers in low-paid jobs have little left after essentials. High costs leave them little income to pay for discretionary goods and services, especially those living in areas with higher housing costs. A full-time worker on the minimum-wage living in a one-bedroom home in the South-east of England earned a spending-money wage of just £1.94 per hour in 2025, after paying for essential costs. A chef on a typical gross wage, of £14 per hour in 2025, faced a spending-money wage of just £3.23. Higher-paid workers spend proportionately less on essentials, but still feel the hit. A typical accountant earning £25.84 per hour has a spending-money wage of £11.74, while a typical pilot, earning £67.73 per hour, has a spending-money wage of £33.27.

Small treats therefore feel like big commitments. A typical night out cost around £58 in 2025. A worker on the minimum wage would need to work 30 hours to afford it, compared to 5 hours for an accountant, or 2 hours for a pilot. More expensive activities cost more hours still: a weekend city break (costing £375) would set back an average-earning chef around 3 weeks of work. In comparison an accountant would need to work for less than one week. Low-waged workers faced with a high hours cost of essentials are effectively frozen out from full participation in many activities, at least before any benefits they receive are taken into account. Hard trade-offs are unavoidable, and a holiday is effectively out of reach.

Housing costs are a major factor in how much people have available to spend. A median-earning accountant renting a one-bedroom home in the South-east has a spending-money wage of £11.74. In comparison, the same median-earning accountant, who bought a flat ten years ago, would have a spending-money wage of £13.50 – almost £2 higher per hour, or an extra £66 per week.

Over the past 20 years, the way attainability has changed depends on people’s work, and what they buy. Workers at or near the minimum wage, such as chefs, have strongly benefited from rises in the minimum wage in recent years, so most things have become more attainable for them. In 2006 a chef had very little money left over after essentials, so would have needed to work 40 hours to afford a night out; in 2025 they needed just 18 hours. A festival ticket required more than 150 fewer hours of work in 2025 than in 2006. A two-seater sofa took 9 weeks of work in 2006, falling to a little under 4 weeks in 2025, a reduction of 5 weeks of work.

Prices for different goods and services have moved unevenly. While the cost for a night out has gone up by 8% in real terms from 2006 to 2025, the cost of a family holiday has increased by 12% in real terms. In contrast, a lunchtime meal deal has fallen by 28% in real terms, and the cost of a basic gym membership has fallen by 47% over the same period (due to new budget-friendly gyms).

People in their 30s face particular attainability challenges. Their rate of homeownership has fallen due to rising house prices, a shift towards buying later in life, and rising private rental costs – all of which leave them with far higher housing costs in 2025 than the same age group faced in 2006 (for similar housing). In 2006, adults in their 30s were more likely to be established homeowners who had bought before the house price boom of the late 1990s. In 2025, they are much more likely to still be renting. The housing costs of people in this age group living in a small home in the South-east have increased by 30%, after adjusting for inflation, from £106 per week to £240 per week over the period.

The government has made tackling the cost-of-living a priority, but it could go further. It should make essentials more affordable and ensure fairer prices for other goods and services that are important for participating in society. Our analysis points to the following policies:

• Cutting energy and water bills would have the proportionately largest impact on attainability for low-earning workers. A 30% reduction in typical energy bills would see the hours cost for a new low-cost outfit for a chef fall from 18 hours of work to 16 hours of work. The cost of a new two-seater sofa would fall by 15 hours.
• More social housing for low-wage workers would have an even greater effect. A retail worker living in the South-east would need to work 26 hours to afford a night out if they were living in a privately rented one-bedroom apartment. In a one bedroom social-rented home, they would only need to work 10 hours, a reduction of 16 hours to afford a relatively small luxury.
• A systematic review of pricing practices, given changes in market structures and technology. In recent years the Competition and Markets Authority and consumer rights groups have called out unfair pricing practices, in areas like funeral costs, leasehold service charges, airport drop-off charges, concert ticket pricing, parking charges, and veterinarian charges. The breadth of these cases is concerning, and needs wider review.

Why Attainability Matters

Since taking office, Andy Burnham has set out a suite of cost-of-living policies. So far, these policies have included a small reduction to energy bills and a cut to business rates for pubs, social clubs, and music venues, with promises for more to come.

Addressing the cost of living has been a key feature of politics since the Covid pandemic, despite the pandemic being declared over years ago. But it is key to understand why, however.

On the surface, real average wages have never been higher. Average weekly earnings now stand at £750 per week – although not much higher than the pre-2008 crisis peak of £725. In real terms earnings have been growing by 1.3% per year over the last two years. After a very concerning spike in 2022 and 2023, inflation has fallen down to 2.8%. There is more uncertainty about the future, but to date the economy has proved relatively resilient. Typical household income growth has also been low, but still growing in recent years. Median household income, after housing costs, has grown by an average of 0.7% per year from 2005-06 to 2024-25 (the most recent data available).

Taking a further step-back, however, reveals a different picture. In the 1960s real earnings grew by 2.9% per year; in the 1970s 3.2%; in the 1980s, 3.4%; before declining slightly to 1.9% in the 1990s, then further declining to 1.5% in the 2000s and 1.3% in the past two years – less than half the earnings growth of the 1960s.

Similarly, improvements in working hours have all but stalled since the turn of the millennium. From 1950 to 2000, average hours worked per worker fell from 42 hours per week to 33 hours per week. In the following 25 years to now, that figure has barely changed, now standing at 32 hours per week. Looking at full-time workers, and therefore putting any compositional effects of shifts to part-time working changes aside, the recent change is also the same: average full-time hours worked in 2001 stood at 38 hours per week, and now stands at 37 per week.

While economic progress has stalled, this has been felt twice over in society. First, improvements, i.e. reductions, in the amount of effort, as measured by working hours, that workers are putting into the economy has not fallen. Seemingly gone is the economic dividend that helps us live more fulfilled lives and work less. Second, despite the continuing hard work that workers are putting in, wage and income growth has stalled, meaning workers are not even receiving much more for the continued work they put in.

The lack of falling hours is not surprising given few actually want to cut back on their working hours. One-in-ten workers (10%) wish to reduce their working hours (although unsurprisingly most wish to keep their current pay). This compares to 9% of workers who wish to work more hours, a figure which has risen by 2 percentage points in the last two years.

The lack of desire to work less is unsurprising given rising cost pressures and a lack of strong earnings growth. The cost of living continues to be the most commonly reported issue facing the UK today. 

But what does the cost of living mean for workers? And how does this relate to the hours they work? How does the rising cost of essentials change what people can attain and how they can participate in life? And how are rising prices actually being experienced?

The new Attainability Index looks beyond essential spending to the goods and services that help people participate in and enjoy everyday life — from nights out and holidays to cars, clothes and gym memberships. It measures their cost in hours of work rather than pounds, taking account of taxes and essential living costs.