According to PaidHR, a Nigerian human resources and payroll technology company, 46 per cent of workers covered by its 2026 compensation report earn less than ₦200,000 monthly, highlighting the differences in pay across Nigeria’s formal salaried workforce. The PaidRight Compensation Intelligence Report 2026 analysed anonymised payroll records of more than 25,000 active workers across over 400 Nigerian employers, using data from July 2026.
The report puts the median monthly gross salary in its dataset at ₦217,000, while the median monthly take-home pay after deductions is ₦199,972. PaidHR said the findings provide salary benchmarks across job roles, industries and career levels, but cautioned that the data does not represent the entire Nigerian workforce.
The report found that 10 out of every 100 workers in its dataset earn below ₦70,000 monthly, while another 10 earn ₦1 million or more. It also put the average monthly salary at ₦439,770, more than twice the median of ₦217,000.
PaidHR explained that the median is the middle value when workers are arranged from the lowest-paid to the highest-paid, while the average is calculated by adding salaries together and dividing by the number of workers. The company uses the median as its main benchmark because exceptionally high salaries can push the average upwards.
Salary Differences Across Industries
The report showed substantial differences in median monthly salaries across industries, with fintech and technology recording the highest figure at ₦418,916, compared with ₦80,000 in retail, hospitality and leisure.
Banking, lending and financial services recorded a median salary of ₦230,491, while engineering and infrastructure stood at ₦250,000. Manufacturing, agriculture and fast-moving consumer goods recorded ₦200,010, while healthcare and pharmaceuticals had a median salary of ₦169,423.
Workers in mobility, transport and logistics had a median monthly salary of ₦108,500.
PaidHR noted that the figures were based on the employers and payroll records available in its dataset. The report included only sectors represented by at least two independent employers, meaning the figures should be treated as benchmarks for the sampled organisations rather than definitive salary levels for every employer in each industry.
Technology Roles Among the Highest-Paid Jobs
The differences were also visible across job roles. Software engineers recorded a median monthly salary of ₦1,069,037, while backend engineers earned ₦911,120 and frontend engineers earned ₦799,000.
Product managers had a median salary of ₦755,887, while product designers recorded ₦736,842. Data analysts earned ₦396,432, and accountants had a median salary of ₦300,000.
At the lower end of the reported salary scale, cleaners earned a median of ₦50,000 monthly, while cashiers earned ₦56,100 and office assistants earned ₦80,000. Security guards recorded a median salary of ₦94,612.
The report included job titles that appeared across at least five independent employers, according to its methodology. The figures therefore provide a basis for comparing reported salaries across roles but do not represent every worker in those occupations.
Women Earn Less Than Men in the Dataset
PaidHR also found a difference in median earnings between men and women. The median monthly salary for women was ₦192,089, compared with ₦238,103 for men. This means the median woman in the dataset earned about 81 kobo for every ₦1 earned by the median man, a gap of approximately 19 per cent.
The gender analysis covered 19,212 workers whose gender was recorded in the payroll data, comprising 11,048 men and 8,164 women.
In a further comparison of 129 employers with at least 10 male and 10 female workers each, men had higher median pay in 81 companies, while women had higher median pay in 30.
PaidHR said differences in the roles and industries occupied by men and women partly explained the overall pay gap, but its analysis also found differences in median pay within individual companies. The figures do not, on their own, establish the causes of the differences or prove discrimination.
Salary Growth Slows After Five Years With an Employer
The report also examined how salaries differed according to workers’ length of service with their current employers.
Workers who had spent less than a year with their employer recorded a median monthly salary of ₦181,235. This rose to ₦200,000 for those with one to three years of service and ₦266,000 for workers with three to five years.
For employees with five to 10 years of service, the median stood at ₦252,534, while those who had spent more than 10 years with their employers recorded ₦287,500.
PaidHR described the pattern as a slowdown in salary growth after the first five years. Its analysis indicated that the median salary for workers with more than 10 years of service was about eight per cent higher than that of workers with three to five years.
The report also noted that nearly 70 per cent of workers in its dataset had spent fewer than three years with their current employer. However, the figures show differences in pay by length of service and do not establish why workers change jobs or whether moving to another employer would necessarily result in higher pay.
PaidHR said the report was based on a single snapshot of active employee payroll records from July 2026. The dataset included salaried records paid in naira with monthly gross pay between ₦30,000 and ₦10 million, while records outside that range were excluded.
The company noted that its platform population is weighted towards formal, urban employers that use payroll software. The dataset does not include informal-sector earnings, and the report could not provide a reliable breakdown by employees’ work location because those details were not captured consistently.
The report is intended to help employers benchmark compensation and enable workers to assess their pay against reported market figures. Its findings offer a view of salary patterns among workers represented on the PaidHR platform, rather than a census of all workers in Nigeria.
