Some common misunderstandings about junior doctors’ pay

Junior doctors—now also called “resident doctors”—begin a five-day strike in England today. In the past we’ve seen these strikes provoke much discussion (and some confusion) about their pay.

For one thing, no junior doctors are currently paid £14 an hour. As we’ve said more than once, this figure was the basic pay (in 2022/23) for first-year doctors only (who make up about a tenth of all junior doctors). 

Most junior doctors earn substantially more than this because they are more senior, or because of extra earnings for things like unsocial hours. In any case, a pay rise last year means that even the basic pay of first-year doctors is now slightly higher, at £15.53 an hour. 

At the time of writing, we don’t yet know what the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration will recommend for 2024/25.  

The real value of junior doctors’ pay has certainly fallen since the late 2000s, but we have seen claims that doctors received an above inflation pay rise last year. This was debatable, at least where junior doctors were concerned, because it depended which measure of inflation you used.

We’ve also seen some recent arguments about how much it would cost the government to meet junior doctors’ pay demands. The health secretary Victoria Atkins and the BMA, a union that represents many junior doctors, have disagreed about this recently.

While we haven’t checked those recent claims specifically, the Department of Health and Social Care and the BMA have disagreed about this before. In our previous fact check on the subject, we explained that the real issue on that occasion was whether you accounted for the money that doctors pay back to the government in tax.  

You’ll find these and other fact checks about junior doctors on our dedicated junior doctors page.