Originally published here
Main points
- Interpreting average earnings data is difficult at the moment; in July we published a blog: How COVID-19 has impacted the Average Weekly Earnings data, which explains the complexities of interpreting earnings data in the current climate; compositional and base effects are likely to affect the growth rates, as the data for 2020 was affected by both the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, in terms of wages and hours worked in the economy, and also disruption to the collection of data from businesses; this means that comparisons with 2020 need to be treated with caution and we would encourage users to focus on the longer-term trends rather than year on year changes.
- Among full time employees the gender pay gap in April 2021 was 7.9%, continuing the downward trend; this was 7.0% in April 2020 and 9.0% in April 2019 and we recommend looking at the longer-term trend.
- There remains a large difference in gender pay gap between employees aged 40 years and over and those aged below 40 years.
- Compared with lower-paid employees, higher earners experience a much larger difference in hourly pay between the sexes.
- The managers, directors and senior officials occupation group has experienced the largest fall in gender pay gap since the pre-pandemic April 2019 figure, in particular for those aged 50 years and over; this group has previously been identified as having a notable impact on the pay gap.
- The gender pay gap is higher in every English region than in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
- Statistics in this bulletin relate to the pay period that includes 21 April 2021, at which time approximately 3.7 million employees were on furlough under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), this is fewer than during the period covered by last year's release when approximately 8.8 million employees were furloughed.
- The estimates in this bulletin include furloughed employees and are based on actual payments made to the employee from company payrolls and the hours on which this pay was calculated, which in the case of furloughed employees are their usual hours.
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