Personal Finances
Pay gap narrowest since records began
The gender pay gap for hourly earnings, excluding overtime; April 1997 to April 2007
The gender pay gap (as measured by the median hourly pay excluding overtime of full-time employees) narrowed between 2006 and 2007 to its lowest value since records began. The gap between women's median hourly pay and men's was 12.6 per cent, compared with a gap of 12.8 per cent recorded in April 2006. The median hourly rate for men went up 2.8 per cent to £11.96, while the rate for women increased by 3.1 per cent to £10.46.
The largest difference was in the South East region, where women's median pay was 15.9 per cent less than men's. The smallest gap was in Northern Ireland, at 2.8 per cent.
On the internationally comparable measure based on mean earnings, women's average hourly pay (excluding overtime) was 17.2 per cent less than men's pay, showing a decrease on the comparable figure of 17.5 per cent for 2006.
In 2007, median weekly earnings of full-time employees for women of £394 were 21 per cent less than those for men (£498), unchanged from 2006.
Women's weekly earnings, including overtime, were lower than men's. This was partly because they worked fewer paid hours per week. Based on hourly earnings excluding overtime, women's earnings increased more slowly across the bottom 10 per cent of the distribution than men's, with a growth of 3.0 per cent compared with 3.7 per cent for their male counterparts. The hourly earnings of the top 10 per cent grew by 2.8 per cent and 3.2 per cent respectively.
Although median hourly pay provides a useful comparison between the earnings of men and women, it does not necessarily indicate differences in rates of pay for comparable jobs. Pay medians are affected by the different work patterns of men and women, such as the proportions in different occupations and their length of time in jobs.
Source: Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE)
Notes: The median is the value below which 50 per cent of employees fall. Pay refers to gross pay (before tax) of full-time employees on adult rates whose pay for the survey week was unaffected by absence. The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings is based on a sample of employee jobs taken from HM Revenue & Customs records. The 2007 ASHE is based on approximately 142,000 returns. In 2007 information was collected for the pay period that included 18 April.
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