What’s the going pay rate for Father Christmas and his elves?

While Father Christmas and his elves do their best to attend every visitor attraction, garden centre and theme park grotto in person, as the big day draws closer, they sometimes have to delegate these responsibilities to a trusted cast of lookalikes. Our monitoring of 36 adverts for seasonal Santa vacancies has found that hourly pay rates for this role range from £11.44 (equivalent to the National Living Wage/NLW) up to as much as £40.00 but are £15.00 at the median, with one theme park even offering retention bonuses of £250 to Father Christmases who stay for the whole season.

Father Christmas’s responsibilities similarly range widely and he sometimes ventures outside his grotto to join group meals, run ‘Santa Paws’ events for dogs or even, at one soft play centre, to showcase his dancing skills. While a handful of employers are looking for experienced or trained actors (or drama students), many more emphasise qualities such as enthusiasm and the ability to ad lib, build rapport, and create a welcoming atmosphere. Common themes in job descriptions include ‘a hearty ho, ho, ho,’ a jolly demeanour and the importance of fostering lasting memories. Meanwhile one garden centre tells prospective candidates that ‘your own beard is an advantage, but not essential. Even bellies can be provided!’

Hourly pay rates for Santa’s elves are somewhat lower: across our sample of 31 job adverts they likewise start at £11.44 (26% of elves are paid in line with the statutory minimum) but rise to just £13.25 at the maximum, with a median pay rate of £11.60 – some £3.40 less than the typical rate for Father Christmas. While our monitoring of pay in recent years has found that the use of separate ‘youth’ rates for workers below the ‘adult’ NLW rate appears to be on the decline across the economy, they persist in the elf labour market with just under a quarter of the sample (23%) paying lower rates to under-21s. Perhaps inevitably, there was limited evidence of youth rates in operation for Father Christmas roles, with a handful of companies actively seeking older candidates.

We also found seven organisations that employ a ‘senior’ or ‘head’ elf. Pay rates for this role, which typically entails additional duties that help a grotto run smoothly such as overseeing a team of elves, giving a daily ‘elf briefing’, acting as a main point of contact for queries, topping up presents and organising elves’ breaktimes, are £14.00 at the median, producing a senior elf supervisory premium of £2.40 when compared with the whole-sample median rate for ‘regular’ elves. Meanwhile a theme park in the sample employs a grotto manager on a rate of £14.00 (overseeing the work of elf colleagues on the NLW) while an animal park in Somerset has advertised for a Mrs Santa on £12.00 to £15.00 (though her ‘husband’ stands to earn between £15.00 and £20.00).