The median gender pay gap for full-time employees in the UK has reduced to 7 per cent from 7.5 per cent over the past year, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The 7 per cent gender pay gap statistic is based on a comparison of the gross median hourly earnings, excluding overtime for men and women in April 2024.
It shows that, on average, women earned £17 for every £20 earned by men, or 83 pence for every pound.
This gap has been declining slowly over the past decade, reducing by around a quarter.
Despite this decrease, Trades Union Congress (TUC) General Secretary Paul Nowak said progress was happening at a “snail’s pace”, stressing how “at this rate it will still take 16 years to close.”
It’s a gap with great inequalities
The gender pay gap varied substantially across location, with all the regions in England having a higher gender pay gap than Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
With a gap of 12.4 per cent, London was among the regions with the biggest pay gap. Northern Ireland was on the other side of the scale with 0.8 per cent.
Discrepancies were also present across occupations, with skilled trained occupations having a 15.7 per cent gap compared to the 2.3 per cent gap across care leisure and other services occupations.
The gap was also much higher for full-time workers aged 40 and above at 13.5 per cent, and for ages 50-59, the gap has increased from 11.1 per cent to 12.1 per cent.
Higher-paying jobs had a bigger gender pay gap compared to lower-paying ones.
The data did not account for other factors like disability or race.
Different average, different trend
Where the median pay gap shows a decrease, the mean average pay gap showed an increase from 10.4 per cent to 11.3 per cent – the first time in the past decade.
The Fawcett Society, UK’s leading membership charity campaigning for gender equality and women’s rights, used this different average methodology which they feel “captures the full impact of men being more likely to be very high earners” to calculate this year’s Equal Pay Day.
Equal Pay Day is the day in the year when, based on the gender pay gap, women stop being paid compared to men.
In 2024, it is 20 November, two days earlier than last year.
Upon confirming the Equal Pay Day date, Fawcett’s Chief Executive Officer, Jemima Olchawski, said: “It’s incredibly alarming to see the mean gender pay gap widen in 2024 and shows that without concerted effort most women won’t see equal pay in our working lifetime.”
Following the recent budget release by Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Olchawski complimented the Labour Government’s commitment to closing the gender pay gap starting with the increase of the national minimum wage.