About this project
The UAE Wealth Dashboard is an independent research project that models income and wealth distribution in the United Arab Emirates. It exists because no official UAE income percentile series is published, and the statistics that are published disagree with each other by a factor of three.
Why this site exists
Ask how much people earn in the UAE and you get irreconcilable answers. The 2024 Labour Force Survey reports a median of AED 10,000 a month. Wage Protection System coverage indicates more than 60% of workers earn under AED 5,000. Both cannot describe the same population, and both are correct about the population each actually measures: household surveys do not reach labour camps and collective accommodation, which is where a large share of the workforce lives.
Most salary content about the UAE quietly picks whichever figure suits its argument. This site models all three populations separately, shows you the toggle, and tells you which one you are looking at. That is the entire point of it.
Where the numbers come from
The income model is calibrated against four anchors: the Wage Protection System finding on the share below AED 5,000, the Labour Force Survey median and mean, crowd-sourced professional medians, and published recruiter executive bands. The wealth curve is derived from World Inequality Database shares. Role-level pay comes from published recruiter salary guides including Cooper Fitch, Hays, Michael Page and Robert Half, reduced by 10% because those guides describe packages rather than base pay. Wealth and millionaire counts come from UBS, Henley and Partners, and Knight Frank. Emirate figures come from the individual statistics centres and Bayut rental data.
Every figure is traceable to one of those sources, and the methodology page states the calibration tests the model has to pass and the places where it does not fully reconcile. Where two credible sources disagree, both are shown rather than averaged.
What this is not
It is not official data, and it is not financial advice. It is a model, built from public sources by someone who wanted a straight answer and could not find one. Percentiles are estimates with real uncertainty, widest at the very top and the very bottom of the distribution where source coverage is thinnest. Treat the numbers as a well-sourced benchmark, not a measurement.
The largest outstanding gap is the 2024 national Household Income and Expenditure Survey, which surveyed about 19,000 families, completed fieldwork in December 2024, was scheduled for publication in June 2025, and has still not appeared. When it does, several assumptions behind this model can be replaced with measured values.
Corrections
If a figure here looks wrong, it may well be. The model is audited against its own source data regularly and errors have been found and fixed that way. Corrections are welcome and are made promptly, with the reasoning stated on the methodology page rather than quietly edited.
Check your own percentile on the interactive dashboard →Frequently asked questions
- Who is behind the UAE Wealth Dashboard?
- It is an independent research project, not affiliated with any UAE government entity, recruiter, bank or employer. No sponsor has any influence over the figures shown.
- Is the data official?
- No. No official UAE income percentile series exists, which is why this model was built. Every input is a published source, listed on the methodology page, but the percentile curves themselves are modelled estimates.
- How often is it updated?
- The model is rebuilt when a source publishes new data, principally the annual recruiter salary guides and the UBS Global Wealth Report. The date it was last updated appears at the top of every page.
- Can I cite these figures?
- Yes, with attribution to the UAE Wealth Dashboard and ideally a note that they are modelled estimates. If you are citing something load-bearing, read the methodology page first so you describe the caveats accurately.