Assistant Manager Salaries in 2026: Bigger Roles, Tight Pay

Pay sits in the middle

Assistant managers are under pressure in retail and hospitality in 2026. They sit between rising wages for entry-level staff and management budgets that have been slower to move.

The National Living Wage rose 4.1% to £12.71 in April. Employer National Insurance has been 15% since April 2025. As a result, many employers want fewer deputy managers, but expect them to do more. The focus is increasingly on people who can run a store or site on their own.

What salaries look like

The UK average salary for an assistant store manager is £30,026, according to Indeed’s November 2026 figures, based on 2,200 advertised salaries.

London has the highest average at £31,893, followed by Cambridge (£31,329), Edinburgh (£31,008), Manchester (£30,863) and Birmingham (£30,464). The London premium is less than £2,000 on average.

RHR's own client briefs show a similar picture. Across 69 assistant and deputy manager roles briefed since January 2026, the median advertised salary is £30,000. Half of all roles sit between £28,000 and £34,000. London briefs show a median of £31,100 compared with £30,000 elsewhere.

Brand and format often matter more than location. In a sample of 718 live assistant and deputy manager adverts, discount grocers advertised salaries of £38,000 to £46,000, while trade and DIY chains sat at £28,500 to £30,500. Some national fast-food chains advertised the same pay in London as elsewhere.

Hospitality holds up

Hospitality is often seen as a lower-paying sector, but live vacancies suggest a different picture.

Payscale reports a self-reported salary of £26,068 for a restaurant assistant manager, with a range of £20,000 to £33,000. However, among 210 hospitality adverts showing a salary, the median was about £33,000. Half fell between £31,750 and £34,125.

Fast-food chains advertised £31,750 to £32,500. One managed pub group typically advertised £31,000 to £35,000 and up to £38,500 in London. One casual dining group advertised above £42,000. Only 43% of the adverts analysed included a salary.

Bigger jobs, fewer roles

The role is becoming larger as the number of jobs falls.

According to the Office for National Statistics, retail had 2.75 million jobs in June 2026. The four-quarter average was 2.78 million, the lowest on record. That was 62,000 fewer than a year earlier and 410,000 fewer than a decade ago.

The British Retail Consortium said retailers' employment costs would rise by £6.5bn over two years. In hospitality, UKHospitality reported 8,784 fewer people employed in December 2025 than in November and 20,014 fewer than in September.

Smaller teams mean assistant managers often run more shifts alone and manage tighter labour budgets. Some will also need to work with changes expected under the Employment Rights Act in 2027.

Why hiring is hard

The biggest challenge is pay compression. A full-time employee on the £12.71 National Living Wage earns about £24,800 a year based on a 37.5-hour week. Some assistant manager salaries start at about £26,000.

One discount grocer pays store assistants £13.50 an hour, which is about £26,300 a year on the same hours. Indeed also puts the average store manager salary at £31,255, only about £1,200 more than the average assistant store manager salary.

RHR's own brief data shows how the gap has narrowed. The median advertised salary for assistant and deputy manager roles rose from £22,000 in 2021 to £29,000 in 2025, an increase of 32%. Over the same period, the National Living Wage increased 37%, from £8.91 to £12.21.

Retention remains another issue. Only one in four new hospitality starters is still in post after 90 days, according to the Harri Peach Report 2026. In the 2026 Hospitality People Survey of 1,446 workers, 63% said they felt fairly paid, but only 52% expected to stay with their employer.

What this means for hiring. Employers may need to create a clearer gap between frontline pay and assistant manager salaries if they expect deputies to take on more responsibility. Candidates should look closely at progression opportunities as well as salary. The employers most likely to attract and keep assistant managers are those offering a clear route to store or general manager within 12 to 18 months.