Economic Wellbeing across Salary Bands in Great Britain

By using near-real-time financial data, the Economic Wellbeing Explorer (EWE) offers an early view of how account holders across Great Britain are really coping. It helps spot shifts in financial wellbeing as they happen, making it a powerful tool for understanding pressure points and trends.

The Economic Wellbeing Explorer has now been refreshed with data up to 1st March 2026. Drawing on de-identified banking data from 5 million GB banking customers, the Explorer sheds light on national, regional and local patterns in economic wellbeing through three key indicators: 

• Overdrawn accounts: the proportion of people who become overdrawn on 2+ occasions in a month 
• Living beyond means: spending 120% or more of monthly income 
• Low emergency resilience: account balances falling below £100 on 2+ occasions in a month 

On their own, these indicators highlight seasonal patterns and shifts following policy or economic changes. Combined with contextual data, they help reveal the underlying drivers of poverty, inequality and financial vulnerability in different parts of Great Britain. 

At a glance

The number of account holders with low emergency resilience has increased, with a 1% increase in Scotland and Wales and a 2% increase in England; as well as a slight increase in overdrawn accounts, with increases from 0.2-0.4% across Great Britain. There has however been a decrease in account holders living beyond means with Scottish account holders dropping to 9.5%, English to 10.3% and Welsh to 9.7%.

A snapshot across the nations shows similar levels across regions with the most variability and largest shifts within low emergency resilience: 

Differences across salary

As well as regional differences we see different behaviour when looking at account holders across different salary bands. 

Interestingly, this month account holders with salaries of under £25,000 have been the only ones to see a decrease, if slight, in the number of overdrawn accounts. In England they saw a 0.02% decrease and in Wales a 0.19% decrease. Every other salary band saw an increase in overdrawn accounts with the largest increase being for the £25-40,000 salary band, particularly in Scotland with a 0.67% increase.

People in the under £25,000 salary band also had the lowest rates of increase for low emergency resilience, and the largest decrease for ccount holders living beyond means. While these changes are all relatively small, and will need to be observed for longer for further insight into a potential positive trend, it is heartening to see those with lower incomes have a positive shift in economic wellbeing.