Gender Pay Gap Statistics and Analysis
In the UK in 2017 the gender pay gap statistics and break down can be found here. It currently stands at 9.1% for full time workers, and 18.4% for full and part-time workers.
Download the report here.
Key points
Download the report here.
Key points
- In April 2017, the gender pay gap based on median hourly earnings for full-time employees decreased to 9.1per cent, from 9.4 per cent in 2016. This is the lowest gap since the survey began in 1997.
- Taking all employees (full-time and part-time together), men are paid more on average than women for all age groups (except those aged 16 to 17, see below). This is because more women are working in part-time jobs (see below). Across all employees, the median hourly full-time pay in full-time jobs is higher than for part-time jobs by a factor of approximately 1.5 (£9.11 compared with £14.00).
- The composition of the male and female employee workforces are quite different, with 42 per cent of women working part-time compared to only 12 per cent of men. Because the hourly earnings of part-time employees tend to be less, on average, than the earnings of full-time employees, women are more likely to receive lower hourly rates of pay. This helps explain why the gender pay gap for all full-time and part-time employees is greater than the gender pay gap for full-time employees only.
- Looking at the gender pay gap between part-time and full-time employees by the number of paid hours worked shows that typically, more men are employed in jobs that involve working a higher number of hours, and for these jobs, it can be seen that the gender pay gap is in favour of men. However, for jobs where the number of paid hours worked by an employee is between 10 and 30, more women work in these jobs and the gender pay gap is in favour of women.
- For part-time employees separately, women are paid more per hour, on average than men, resulting in a “negative” pay gap. However, as with the full-time gender pay gap, this part-time gender pay gap moved closer to zero, from negative 6.1 per cent in April 2016 to negative 5.1 per cent in April 2017; this was because earnings for part-time men increased by more than for women.
- The net impact of both the full-time and part-time gender pay gaps moving closer to zero, together with an increase in the proportion of employees working full-time versus part-time, is a marginal increase in the gap for all employees, from 18.2 per cent in 2016 to 18.4 per cent in 2017. Similar year-on-year increases have occurred in previous years, for example, in 2013 and 2015, but the longer-term trend is downward, from 27.5 per cent in 1997.
- The gender pay gap also varies by age. Among full-time employees, the gap is relatively small up to and including those aged 35 to 39. For those aged 16 to 17 the gap is negative 3.5 per cent. From the 40 to 44 age group and upwards, the gap is much wider, with men being paid substantially more on average than women. This widening of the gap is likely to be connected with patterns of return to work after having children, in particular any differences between men and women in timing and nature of returning to the labour market. A negative gender pay gap among part-time employees emerges in the age group 30 to 34 (just after the average women’s age for having a first birth) and increases for 35 to 39 year olds before beginning to be reversed.
- For high earners (top decile), the gap for full-time employees has remained largely consistent, fluctuating around approximately 20 per cent (18.2 per cent in 2017). For low earners (bottom decile) the gap has narrowed over the long term, to 5.0 per cent in April 2017, an increase on the 2016 figure of 4.9 per cent.
- The gender pay gap for full-time employees in the private sector decreased from 16.7 per cent in 2016 to 15.9 per cent in 2017, the lowest since the series began in 1997, continuing the long-term downward trend. The gender pay gap in the public sector increased from 11.1 per cent to 13.1 per cent; this is the highest gender pay gap seen in the public sector since 1999.
- The gender pay gap has decreased for all UK countries since 1997. In 2017, England has the highest gender pay gap, of 10.0 per cent. In recent years the gender pay gap for full-time employees in Northern Ireland has been below 0 per cent, that is, women earn more, on average, than men. This is, in part, due to a higher proportion of public sector jobs here than in the rest of the UK. There are more women employed in this sector than men and these jobs tend to be higher-paid, in general, than in the private sector.