Ciphr’s analysis of earnings figures from the Office of National Statistics indicates that 78% of full-time roles have a gender pay gap in favour of men.
By Maggie Mancini
The latest employee earnings figures from the Office for National Statistics show that millions of U.K. workers are employed in occupations where men are paid more than women. An analysis of the gender pay gap data by Ciphr reveals that 78% of all full-time job roles in the U.K., and 81% of roles held by 50,000 or more workers, have a gender pay gap in favour of men.
That’s around four in five occupations with a gender-based pay disparity. Of those, over a quarter (30%) pay men at least 10% more per hour, while a third (32%) pay men between 5% and 9% more. Over a year, this could add up to a gender pay difference of several thousand pounds or more, depending on base salary. Over the course of a career, it could impact many women’s lifetime earnings and may have repercussions on their pension savings.
Nearly 13 million people – including 4.9 million women and 8 million men – are employed in full-time professions with a gender pay gap of 1% or higher in favour of men. This ranges from 26.2% for financial managers and directors down to 1% for waiters and waitresses, and youth and community workers.
The U.K.’s average median gender pay gap for full-time workers has remained relatively unchanged for the last three years. Full-time female employees must still contend with a 7.7% pay gap—the same gap that existed for them in 2021. This means that women typically earn 92p for every pound earned by a man.
Based on median hourly earnings, Ciphr’s study found two job roles—national government administrative occupations and senior care workers—where full-time workers benefited from gender pay parity.
Popular careers with the largest numbers of full-time workers appear the most likely to have pay disparities. Every job role held by over 200,000 full-time employees in the U.K. has a gender pay gap in favour of men. This includes IT managers, financial advisers, school teachers, registered nurses, retail managers, and LGV drivers.
Even in the largest occupations where women predominate, they still often get paid less than men on average. At least 60% of the U.K.’s full-time care workers, secondary school teachers, administrative and clerical assistants, bookkeepers, payroll managers, and primary school teachers are women. Yet, all these job roles have a gender pay gap that favours male employees.
“The latest gender pay gap figures are incredibly disappointing and frustrating. There’s no other way to view them,” says Claire Williams, chief people officer at Ciphr. “The gender pay gap is slowly closing, and generally, more full-time roles in the U.K. have decreased their gender pay gaps than increased them over the past year, which is encouraging. There is still such a long way to go to close the gap. Far more needs to be done by employers, and quickly, to reduce embedded salary discrepancies and ensure people are fairly rewarded for the value they bring to an organisation.”
