The UK spouse-visa minimum income requirement is £29,000 a year. Around half of all UK employees earn below that on their own salary — and the rule hits women far harder than men. Here is the affordability data: the share earning below £29,000 by gender and region, the fall in partner-route applications since April 2024, and what it means for Thai-partner sponsors. For grant rates on the Thai family route, see our Thai spouse & family visa statistics.
Compiled & reviewed by Sunaree Ko, Founder · Sources: ONS, House of Commons Library, Migration Advisory Committee
The minimum income requirement (MIR) to sponsor a partner or spouse on a UK family visa is £29,000 a year — the figure the UK-based sponsor must show through earnings, savings or other permitted sources. On earnings alone that is a high bar: the House of Commons Library estimates that roughly 50% to 57% of the employed adult population could not qualify on their own salary, and the Home Office's own impact assessment put the share unable to qualify at 40% to 50%. Among full-time employees the share earning below £29,000 is lower — about 30% — because the headline figure includes part-time and lower-paid work. The effect is also very uneven: it falls hardest on women, younger workers and people outside London and the South East. This page covers the affordability and impact picture only — for how often Thai family applications are granted, see our Thai spouse & family visa statistics.
This is the headline impact table: the estimated share of UK employees whose own earnings fall below the £29,000 threshold, split by gender. Among full-time employees the gap is already wide; across all employees — including part-time work, where women are over-represented — it widens further.
| Group | Share earning below £29,000 | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| All employees | ~50% | Full- & part-time (Commons Library: 50–57%) |
| Full-time employees | ~30% | Full-time only (ASHE) |
| Men (full-time) | ~16% | ASHE, via Migration Observatory |
| Women (full-time) | ~35% | ASHE, via Migration Observatory |
Shares are indicative and rounded. "All employees" follows the House of Commons Library range of 50–57% (and the Home Office's 40–50%); the full-time and gender figures are from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings as cited by the Migration Observatory. An older Annual Population Survey cut (2022) put the all-employee gap wider still, at roughly 42% of men and 64% of women below the threshold. Always confirm the latest figures at the sources below.
The £29,000 figure sits close to the middle of the UK pay distribution but above what a large minority — and on the broadest measure, around half — of employees actually take home. In April 2025, median gross annual pay was £32,890 for all employees and £39,039 for full-time employees (ONS). But those medians hide a wide gender gap: full-time men had a median of £41,832 against £35,670 for full-time women, and the part-time workforce — which is majority women — earns far less again.
The single clearest pattern in the data is gender. Among full-time employees, roughly 35% of women earn below £29,000 against about 16% of men — more than double the share. Once part-time work is included the gap is wider still, because women make up the large majority of part-time employees and part-time pay is much lower. An older Annual Population Survey cut (2022, all employees) put the share below the threshold at around 42% for men and 64% for women. Whichever measure is used, a British or settled woman trying to sponsor a partner is far less likely to clear £29,000 on her own salary than a man — which is why the policy is repeatedly described in the official reviews as having a disproportionate impact on women.
Because pay varies sharply across the UK, the £29,000 rule is much easier to meet in London and the South East than in lower-paid regions. The clearest sourced way to see this is median pay by area: London and the South East sit well above £29,000, while several regions and nations have median pay much closer to — or below — the threshold for large parts of their workforce. The table below shows indicative regional median annual pay (full-time, ONS ASHE 2025) to illustrate the gap; we do not publish a precise "share below £29k" for each region because no single source cleanly breaks it down that way.
| Region / nation | Median full-time pay (indicative) | Vs £29,000 |
|---|---|---|
| London | ~£47,000 | Well above |
| South East | ~£40,000 | Above |
| UK (all regions) | ~£39,000 | Above (full-time) |
| Wales | ~£36,000 | Above, but tighter |
| North East | ~£35,000 | Above, but tighter |
Indicative regional medians are for full-time employees, rounded to the nearest £1,000 from ONS ASHE 2025 regional pay (Table 5 / Table 25). These are medians, not the share below £29,000: even in higher-paying regions a substantial minority of workers — and across all employees including part-time work, around half — still earn below the threshold. Use as a guide only; confirm at ONS.
The threshold rose from £18,600 to £29,000 on 11 April 2024 — a 56% jump overnight. The clearest measure of impact is what happened to applications. According to the Migration Advisory Committee's June 2025 review, partner-route applications fell by about 28%, from an average of roughly 13,600 per quarter in 2023 to about 9,800 per quarter in the second half of 2024. Some nationalities saw far steeper falls — Pakistani nationals dropped by about 39%. Crucially, this is a fall in who applied, not a collapse in success: the grant rate for those who did apply stayed high (the MAC noted it easing from around 94% to 86% across 2024 as the new rule bedded in). In other words, the £29,000 rule mostly prices couples out before they apply, rather than refusing them afterwards.
No — that increase is currently paused. The previous government planned to raise the threshold in stages to £38,700 (the old Skilled Worker level). In September 2024 the new government froze it at £29,000 and asked the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to review it. The MAC reported on 10 June 2025 and advised against aligning the family threshold with the work-visa figure, recommending instead a lower band centred on roughly £23,000–£25,000 (a defensible range of about £19,000–£28,000 for the sponsor alone) so that most full-time minimum-wage workers could qualify. The MAC argued that tying family visas to skilled-worker earnings does not reflect their different purpose and risks breaching the right to family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. As of June 2026 the rule remains £29,000 while the government decides; the £38,700 figure is not in force for family visas. See our £29,000 income requirement explained for how the rule is applied in practice.
If your partner is in Thailand and you are the UK-based sponsor, here is the part that matters most: the £29,000 is measured on the sponsor's income (or savings), not on your Thai partner's earnings in Thailand. So whether a couple meets the rule depends almost entirely on what the British or settled partner earns or holds in savings.
For the rules in detail, see our UK spouse visa guide and the £29,000 income requirement explained; for how often Thai family applications are granted, see Thai spouse & family visa statistics.
This page brings together official, free, published statistics on affordability and impact — it does not report grant rates (those live on our Thai family-route statistics page). The figures and where they come from:
Primary sources — all free, most under the Open Government Licence (links open in a new tab):
Last updated: June 2026. Next update: when the government responds to the MAC review or new ASHE/Home Office data is released. The pound figures and rules quoted here should always be confirmed at GOV.UK before relying on them.
UK Visa From Thailand (2026) "Who Can't Meet the £29,000 UK Spouse Visa Income Requirement? (Impact Data)". https://ukvisafromthailand.com/en/uk-minimum-income-requirement-statistics — data: ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, House of Commons Library SN06724, Migration Advisory Committee (June 2025).
Last reviewed: June 2026. This page presents aggregate published statistics from the ONS, House of Commons Library and Migration Advisory Committee for information only; it is not immigration advice and not an assessment of whether any individual couple meets the income requirement. Shares of employees below £29,000 are indicative and vary by survey and by whether part-time work is included. Always confirm the current threshold and any pound figures at GOV.UK.
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Sunaree founded UK Visa From Thailand and compiles and reviews the guides and data on this site. We are a document-preparation and certified-translation service — not a law firm and not IAA-registered — and every figure is sourced from official UK statistics. Read Sunaree's full bio →