Retail pay 2025: Who’s top of the league?

Tesco became the latest retailer to unveil its new pay rates for store colleagues this week as it injects £180m into its people package.

The retailer follows Pets at Home and John Lewis, which revealed pay rises for thousands of employees earlier this month.

Retail Gazette rounds up and compares the hourly rates at the UK’s leading retailers to find out which is the best paying employer.

Lidl cemented itself as the highest paying retail employer this month, as it increased the pay for 28,000 of its hourly-paid colleagues to £12.75 nationally, up from £12.40 and increasing to £13.65 with length of service. This increases to £14.35 for those in London.

Rival Aldi follows closely behind, with its rates rising to £12.75 and £14.05 this month, and £12.85 and £14.16 in September. Tesco and Sainsbury’s have also chosen to boost store pay in two stages.

John Lewis Partnership chose to forgo partner bonuses again this year, instead ploughing £114m into increasing pay for 65,000 of its employees.

John Lewis and Waitrose shop floor colleagues will see the standard hourly rate rise to £12.40 outside London and £13.85 within the M25. Those in specialist roles will earn £13.39 per hour, increasing to £14.96 in London.

JLP chair Jason Tarry said: “The priority for us at this stage in the transformation is to focus on closing the gap on base pay because when we talk to Partners, what they want to do is make sure that we’re helping them every month, not just once a year, and closing the gap against the market from a base pay perspective.”

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