The True Wage framework starts with a simple idea: a job should be valued by what you keep and how much time the job really consumes, not by gross salary alone. A role that pays more can still produce a lower real hourly return if it requires a longer commute, more office days, more unpaid time or higher weekly work spend.
True Wage = (take-home pay − recurring work costs + employer-paid offsets) ÷ total work time
In practice, total work time includes paid working hours plus commute time and any unpaid overtime that is part of the role. Recurring work costs can include fares, fuel, parking, lunches, clothing, tools and other regular job-linked spend.
| Input | How it affects True Wage |
|---|---|
| Gross salary or hourly rate | Sets the starting point before tax and NI |
| Tax year and region | Changes tax bands and take-home pay |
| Hours worked and weeks worked | Sets the paid time base |
| Commute minutes and office days | Adds non-paid time back into the job |
| Commute cost and monthly work spend | Reduces the money actually kept |
| Unpaid overtime | Reduces real hourly value even if salary stays unchanged |
| Benefits that offset costs | Can partially improve the net result |
A pure after-tax figure misses one of the biggest costs of office-based work: time. ONS found that people working from home saved an average of 56 minutes on that day from not commuting. That does not just improve convenience. It changes the denominator of real hourly pay.
The city and regional pages should be read as decision support, not as a promise that one city is always better than another. True Wage changes by role, industry, travel mode, childcare setup and office policy. That is why each ranking page is paired with a calculator rather than presented as a fixed truth.
Start with your city or region page, note the main drag factors, then test your real situation inside True Wage, Salary After Commuting Costs and Salary After Expenses. The methodology is only useful if it ends in a cleaner decision.
| Input area | What is modelled | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Tax year | PAYE bands and NI thresholds | Small tax changes can shift comparisons materially. |
| Commuting time | Hours lost to travel | True wage falls when unpaid time rises. |
| Office days | Weekly frequency of travel and work-linked spend | This is often the biggest swing variable. |
| Recurring costs | Transport, lunches and office-day spending | These costs can erase a meaningful part of salary uplift. |
| Primary source | How PayPrecise uses it | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Income Tax rates and allowances (2025 to 2026) | Used for Personal Allowance and main UK tax bands in calculator/editorial explanations. | View source |
| National Insurance rates and category letters | Used for NI examples and take-home calculations. | View source |
| ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025 | Primary benchmark source for UK earnings, pay percentiles and regional comparisons cited across salary pages. | View source |
| ONS homeworking and commuting-time evidence | Used where pages discuss the time value of commuting and office-vs-remote comparisons. | View source |
| TfL Travel in London 2025 | Used for London travel-time context in commuting and city-comparison pages. | View source |
| Centre for Cities: Mapping the 30-minute city | Used for public-transport access comparisons between major UK cities. | View source |
| Nomis official labour market profiles | Used for regional earnings context and local labour-market cross-checks. | View source |
City comparison pages combine official earnings benchmarks with transport-access or travel-time context. They should be read as evidence-led editorial guidance rather than a substitute for a personal tax calculation.