Most full-time undergraduates now work during term time. The Higher Education Policy Institute and Advance HE’s Student Academic Experience Survey 2026 found 65% in paid employment, averaging nearly 14 hours a week. If you are about to join them, the best part-time jobs for students are the ones that fit around a timetable, and a few rules on tax, National Insurance and visas are worth knowing before your first shift.
Rent is usually the biggest cost your earnings go towards. Our guide to student accommodation costs breaks down what students pay by city, and many purpose-built rooms come with bills included, which makes the rest of the budget easier to plan.
Before you start work
Working hours. There is no student-specific limit on working hours if you have an unrestricted right to work in the UK, but ordinary employment law still applies. GOV.UK sets a maximum average of 48 hours a week for adults unless you opt out in writing, and under-18s cannot work more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week. If you are on a Student visa, your term-time hours are capped; the detail is in the international students section below.
Tax and National Insurance. HM Revenue and Customs treats students like any other worker; there is no student exemption. In the 2026/27 tax year you can earn £12,570 (the Personal Allowance) before paying income tax, and you pay National Insurance on earnings above £242 a week. If you are put on an emergency or incorrect tax code, you can temporarily pay too much tax; HMRC will often correct this through your pay, and if not you can claim a refund.
Your National Insurance number and right to work. Your National Insurance number keeps your contributions record straight. You can apply for one free on GOV.UK, and you can start work before it arrives as long as you can prove your right to work, usually with a passport or a share code.
The best part-time jobs for students
The nine jobs below can all work well around a degree. As a reference point for the pay figures, the National Living Wage from April 2026 is £12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over, except those who qualify for the apprentice rate.
Student ambassador
Universities recruit their own students to show prospective applicants and their families around campus, help at open days and do phone or social media outreach. Ambassador work is often offered around individual events rather than fixed weekly shifts. Apply through your university’s outreach or marketing team; previous experience is not always required.
Typical pay: the University of Plymouth, for example, pays a standard £14.42 an hour, rising to £14.77 for some activities.
Campus jobs: library, students’ union, gym
These are student jobs where the employer already understands term dates and exams: library help desks, students’ union bars and shops, campus gym receptions. Campus jobs can also save you adding another commute to your day. Check your students’ union jobshop and the university’s own vacancies page.
Typical pay: some universities are accredited Real Living Wage employers. The Living Wage Foundation’s current rates are £13.45 an hour across the UK and £14.80 in London, with almost 17,000 organisations accredited to pay them.
Hospitality: bar, café and restaurant work
Pulling pints, waiting tables, making coffee and running food suit students because evening and weekend shifts can fit around daytime lectures, while café work often has early shifts that leave the afternoon free. Training happens on the job, and bars usually ask for staff aged 18 or over.
Typical pay: usually the minimum wage to a little above, often with tips on top. Tips do not count towards the minimum wage, and they count as taxable income.
Retail
Serving customers, tills, stockrooms and fitting rooms, with hours that lean towards weekends. Christmas temp recruitment often starts in the autumn, with extra hours available during the university winter break. Many entry-level shop-floor roles do not require previous retail experience.
Typical pay: minimum wage to a little above; some large retailers pay all staff the Real Living Wage regardless of age.
Tutoring
If you know a GCSE or A-level subject well enough to teach it, you can tutor in person or online. Employers and agencies commonly require the appropriate background check when you are tutoring children; in England and Wales this may be an enhanced DBS check. Since 21 January 2026, eligible self-employed tutors in England and Wales have been able to apply for one themselves through a DBS umbrella body, per GOV.UK guidance. Tutoring you arrange yourself also counts as self-employment; under the standard Student visa work conditions self-employed tutoring is not allowed, so only take tutoring work where you are employed rather than self-employed or engaged as an independent contractor.
Typical pay: you set your own rate if you work independently, so it varies by subject and level; agencies set theirs.
Exam invigilation and note-taking
Universities hire students and locals to supervise exams and to support disabled students with note-taking in lectures. The work is quiet and structured, though you are responsible for the room, and it concentrates in short bursts around exam periods. Apply through your university’s exams office or student support service.
Typical pay: set by each university; check your institution’s current rate and how holiday pay is handled.
Care and support work
Care work means supporting older or disabled people with daily living, in care homes or in their own homes, on early, late or weekend shifts. Employers usually provide training, care roles commonly require the appropriate criminal-record or safeguarding check, and the work is directly relevant if you are studying nursing, medicine or social work.
Typical pay: Skills for Care’s March 2026 pay report put the median for care workers in the independent sector in England at £12.60 an hour in December 2025, and since April 2026 the minimum wage of £12.71 an hour has been the legal minimum for most of these roles.
Warehouse and fulfilment
Picking, packing and sorting in a distribution centre is physical work, with shifts that run into evenings and weekends and extra hours usually on offer over the winter peak. You will need to be able to reach the site.
Typical pay: some warehouse employers pay well above the minimum wage. Amazon, for example, starts frontline operations staff in the UK at £14.30 an hour, rising to £15.30 depending on location.
Events, stewarding and promotional work
Concerts, festivals, sporting events, conferences and brand promotions regularly use casual staff: checking tickets, directing crowds, handing out samples, working a stand. Bookings are one-off, so you can pick up the ones that suit your week. Basic stewarding may not need an SIA licence, but security duties can; the Security Industry Authority’s guidance on GOV.UK explains which duties need one. Agencies and campus marketing schemes are the usual route in.
Typical pay: usually the minimum wage, with higher rates for some events and promotions.
Other ways to earn money
None of the options below is a job with an employer. That changes how tax works and, on a Student visa, whether you are allowed to do them.
Freelancing. Paid writing, design, video editing or social media work for clients is self-employment. You set your own rates and hours. If your gross trading income is £1,000 or less in a tax year, GOV.UK’s trading allowance means you will usually not need to tell HMRC; above £1,000 you normally need to register for Self Assessment. Under the standard Student visa work conditions, self-employed freelance work is not permitted.
Delivery riding. Food and parcel apps let you choose when you log on, and demand is highest in the evenings and at weekends. Major delivery platforms usually engage riders as self-employed rather than as employees, so this is not permitted under the standard Student visa work conditions.
Paid research studies. University departments pay participants for psychology experiments, product tests and focus groups, usually as a flat fee per study rather than a wage. Watch department noticeboards and research participation pools.
Minimum wage for students from April 2026
For most employed jobs, the minimum an employer can legally pay depends on your age and whether you are an apprentice. The rates below took effect on 1 April 2026 and are set by the government on the advice of the Low Pay Commission
| Age band | Rate from April 2026 | Who it usually applies to |
|---|---|---|
| 21 and over (National Living Wage) | £12.71 an hour | Most university students aged 21 or older |
| 18 to 20 | £10.85 an hour | Students aged 18, 19 or 20 |
| Under 18 | £8.00 an hour | Workers over school leaving age but under 18 |
| Apprentice | £8.00 an hour | Apprentices under 19, or in the first year of their apprenticeship |
Rates from GOV.UK, effective 1 April 2026. The government updates them every April.
Some employers pay more than the legal minimum. Almost 17,000 organisations are accredited Living Wage employers, according to the Living Wage Foundation, whose Real Living Wage is £13.45 an hour across the UK and £14.80 an hour in London, announced on 22 October 2025 and calculated by the Resolution Foundation.
Where to find part-time student jobs
Many universities advertise student vacancies directly:
- Your university careers service and jobshop. Many universities run a job board of roles aimed at students, on campus and with local employers.
- The students’ union. Union bars, shops, cafés and events teams hire students, and union job boards list local vacancies.
- Campus vacancies. Library, gym, catering, accommodation reception and student ambassador roles are advertised on your university’s own jobs page.
- Temp and staffing banks. Many universities run their own temporary staffing service for admin and event work, and high-street agencies place students in retail, warehouse and hospitality roles.
- The high street. Some independent cafés, shops and bars still advertise vacancies locally or accept CVs in person, especially in the weeks before Christmas.
September and early October can be busy for student recruitment, with bars, shops and campus employers taking on staff for the new academic year. If you are also still looking for somewhere to live, see our guide to how and when to book student accommodation.
How many hours should you work?
The University of Bristol and the University of Manchester both recommend that full-time undergraduates work no more than 15 hours a week in term time. For students who do work, HEPI and Advance HE’s 2026 survey puts the average at nearly 14 hours a week, taking combined study and work to 44.2 hours, against the Office for National Statistics average of 36.6 hours for full-time employees that the survey cites.
If you work while studying mainly to cover living costs, start with the gap between your maintenance loan and what you actually spend. In August 2025, research by HEPI, Loughborough University’s Centre for Research in Social Policy and TechnologyOne found that the maximum English maintenance loan at the time (£10,544 a year) covered only around half of a first-year student’s costs, and estimated that even a student on the maximum loan would need more than 20 hours a week of minimum-wage work to reach a minimum standard of living. Our maintenance loan guide shows the 2026/27 rates and what affects them, and our guide to how students pay for accommodation sets out how loans, work and savings fit together.
If you can, keep your hours flexible around exam weeks and pick up more work in the vacations, when full-time work is an option for most students, subject to the visa rules below.
International students: the visa work rules
If you are in the UK on a Student visa, your right to work is a condition of your immigration permission, so check your own visa and follow it exactly. The rules below are drawn from UKCISA, the UK Council for International Student Affairs.
Term-time hours. If your sponsor is a higher education provider with a track record of compliance and your course is full-time, you can work up to 20 hours a week in term time at degree level or above, and up to 10 hours a week below degree level.
What a week means. A week runs Monday to Sunday, and the cap applies to each week individually rather than as an average. Hours across multiple jobs are added together, so keep a record.
Vacations. You can work full-time during official vacation periods, where your visa and your university’s term dates allow it. Your institution defines what counts as a vacation, and UKCISA advises checking your term dates with your university. Research students in particular should check with their university, because institutions differ in how they define term time and agreed holidays.
What counts. Paid work and unpaid “voluntary work” both count towards the limit. Genuine volunteering does not, provided it meets the Home Office definition, including having no contractual obligation and no payment beyond reasonable expenses. An eligible work placement that is an assessed and integral part of your course does not count either.
Work you must not do. Under the standard Student visa work conditions, you cannot be self-employed, run a business, work on a freelance or self-employed basis, take a permanent full-time job, or work as a professional sportsperson or entertainer. That rules out gig work through delivery apps and self-arranged tutoring or freelancing, and if an employer asks you to work as a self-employed contractor to save paperwork, do not agree.
Work that fits the rules. Employed roles within your permitted hours are fine, including campus jobs, retail, hospitality, care work and warehouse work. A students’ union sabbatical officer post is a specific permitted exception.
Sources
- National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates, GOV.UK
- Maximum weekly working hours, GOV.UK
- Income Tax rates and Personal Allowances, GOV.UK
- Tax-free allowances on property and trading income, GOV.UK
- Tips at work: tips and tax, GOV.UK
- National Insurance, GOV.UK
- Check how to claim a tax refund, GOV.UK
- Apply for a National Insurance number, GOV.UK
- DBS checks for self-employed people and personal employees, GOV.UK
- Check if you need an SIA licence to work at an event, GOV.UK
- Working as an international student, UKCISA
- Student and Child Student caseworker guidance, GOV.UK
- Immigration Rules: Appendix Student, GOV.UK
- Student Academic Experience Survey 2026, HEPI and Advance HE
- A Minimum Income Standard for Students, HEPI
- Working part-time, University of Bristol
- Part-time jobs, University of Manchester Careers Service
- Become an ambassador, University of Plymouth
- Pay in the adult social care sector in England, as at December 2025, Skills for Care
- Minimum starting pay announcement, Amazon UK
- Real Living Wage rates, Living Wage Foundation
- Key information and statistics, Living Wage Foundation
FAQs
How many hours can a student work?
Ordinary employment law applies: adults can average up to 48 hours a week unless they opt out, and under-18s are capped at 8 hours a day and 40 a week, per GOV.UK. There is no extra student-specific limit if you have an unrestricted right to work; on a Student visa the cap is usually 20 hours a week in term time at degree level. Bristol and Manchester both recommend no more than 15.
Do students pay tax?
Yes. Students are taxed like any other worker. The first £12,570 you earn in the 2026/27 tax year is covered by the Personal Allowance, and National Insurance applies above £242 a week. If an emergency tax code means you overpay, HMRC can correct it through your pay or refund it.
Can international students work?
Most degree-level students on a Student visa can work up to 20 hours a week in term time and full-time in official vacations, if their sponsor has a track record of compliance. Check the exact conditions on your own visa.
What is the minimum wage for students?
There is no student rate. From April 2026 you are entitled to £12.71 an hour at 21 and over (unless you qualify for the apprentice rate), £10.85 at 18 to 20, and £8.00 under 18 or as an eligible apprentice.
What are the best-paying part-time jobs for students?
Of the roles with published rates, Amazon warehouse jobs start at £14.30 an hour and Plymouth pays student ambassadors £14.42, both comfortably above the £12.71 minimum wage, and any accredited Real Living Wage employer pays at least £13.45, or £14.80 in London. Tutoring and freelancing can pay more, but earnings depend on the rate you set and the clients you find.
Do I need experience?
Often not for entry-level roles. Many employers provide training for bar, café, retail, warehouse, care, invigilation and ambassador work, though requirements vary by vacancy; tutoring and freelancing usually depend on skills or subject knowledge you already have.
