How much do UK channel partners pay their staff?

Channel bucks wider UK pay trend as average salaries continue to rise, according to latest CRN Essential report

The average pay of staff at UK resellers and MSPs has continued to rise even during Covid.

That's the key finding of CRN's Staff & Salaries Report 2022, which analyses the wage/salary and average monthly headcount data tucked away in the most recently filed annual accounts of the 500 resellers, MSPs and other breeds of channel partners that made the cut for VAR 500.

Following on from the publication of VAR 500, the report provides further confirmation of both the growing scale and enduring health of the industry during challenging times, with average wages and headcount both rising for yet another year.

The average pay packet across the front-line tech providers we track now stands at almost £49,000, while their collective headcount of nearly 80,000 is up by over 3,600 annually.

Where do they all have their HQs? Are they hiring? And to what extent does the channel's supposed southern bias really exist?

Does a large reseller based in Maidstone or Milton Keynes pay staff more than a small one headquartered in Manchester, Morpeth or Motherwell? Are cybersecurity VAR wages rising faster than those among software specialists? And which reseller or MSP pays the highest wage of all?

CRN Essential subscribers can read the report here. Find out more about CRN Essential here.

Here are five key takeaways from the report

Making full use of furlough

Although the top 500's combined headcount rose by another 3,600 employees year on year, employee levels were to a certain extent artificially shielded by government support.

Furlough/government grant claims made by the top 400 in their latest years stood at a collective £64.3m (and this is before factoring in the 228 firms whose accounts did not specify whether/to what extent they used the furlough scheme). At least 13 claimed over £1m, and 33 over £500,000.

That said, many remained in hiring mode even during lockdown as they moved to exploit rising demand for cybersecurity, UC, public cloud and digital transformation services.

London and home counties still a hotspot

The UK channel's south-eastern bias shows no sign of waning, with London and the wider South East called home by 47 per cent of VAR 500 headquarters (despite housing just 27 per cent of the population). Berkshire is a prime VAR hotspot, with the leafy home county playing host to 25 of the top 500 and boasting the highest VAR density in the country (27.4 VAR 500 firms per million inhabitants).

Print performs poorly

VAR specialism is a strong predictor of salaries, with cybersecurity specialists paying staff an average of £24,000 more than those focused on print and office supplies. As the only one to suffer wage deflation and one of just two to record a headcount dip, print was also the worst-performing of the five sub-sectors under review.

Large firms have largest cheque books

For the first time since CRN began tracking wages four years ago, the firms in the second tier by revenues - ie those ranked 101st to 200th - paid staff more than their top 100 counterparts. These two largest cohorts were a country mile ahead of those ranked between 201 and 300 and 301 and 400, however.