Women saw their weekly pay increase at a quicker pace than men in the 12 months to April 2023, but the UK’s gender pay gap has not narrowed.
The Office for National Statistics’ analysis of the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) data showed that median weekly earnings across all full-time employees was £682 in April 2023, which is a 6.2% increase on the figure for April 2022 (£642). This is the highest rate of growth since comparable records began in 1997.
However, when adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Prices Index including housing costs, median weekly earnings fell by 1.5% on the year.
Gender pay gap in 2023
Gender pay gap could take 63 years to close
Women saw their median weekly earnings soar 9.1%, from £450 to £491, but men’s average earnings increased by only 6.8% from £623 in 2022 to £666 in 2023.
The gender pay gap, however, barely changed in the 12 months to April 2023. The ASHE data showed the median gross hourly earnings pay gap among full-time employees rose slightly to 7.7%, up from 7.6% in 2022.
For part-time employees the pay gap remained the same at -3.3%, indicating a pay gap in favour of women, and among all employees the pay gap was 14.3%, down from 14.4% in 2022.
Approximately 86% of male employees were in full-time jobs, compared with approximately 61% of female employees.
The ONS said the clearest insight into the pay gap is provided by analysis across age groups. For employees under 40 years old the pay gap is just 4.7%, but grows to 10.3% for those aged 40 to 49 years and to 14.2% for those aged 60 and over.
Dr Zara Nanu, director, Fair Future of Work Strategy, at XpertHR, said not enough is being done to tackle the gender pay gap, but organisations should still persevere.
“I remain optimistic that we can achieve fair pay for all. Companies, like Greggs for instance, have reduced their hourly median pay gap by 15 percentage points to 2.8%, and introduced schemes to encourage more women for senior management positions. With similar initiatives, supported by technology to identify gaps and discern root causes, organisations can take strides in addressing gender pay disparities – going above and beyond mere legal requirements,” she said.
“We’ve put a man on the moon, created self-driving cars, and are now seeing the impacts AI could bring to all our lives. We have the technological solutions to reduce the gap, and more often than not an idea of how to tackle the gap, but it’s down to companies to use these innovations and take action on the results the data finds.”
TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said bolder government action was needed to hold employers to account for their pay gaps.
“Companies must be legally required to explain how they’ll close their gender pay gaps – and should face fines if they don’t comply with the law,” he said. “And we must fix Britain’s broken childcare and social care systems, or women will continue to lose out as they bear the brunt of caring responsibilities. Fixing care is critical to raising women’s earnings.”
The largest fall in the gender pay gap was seen across skilled trades occupations, from 18.3% in 2022 to 15% this year. However, this was still the largest pay gap of any occupational group.
The pay gap is still greater among higher earners. A full-time male employee in the 90th percentile of male earnings earns 14.8% more than a women in the equivalent percentile of female earnings.
The gender pay gap varies substantially between regions and is higher in every region of England than in Northern Ireland, which has a pay gap of -3.5%) in favour of women, Scotland (1.7%) and Wales (5.6%).
Its analysis also looked at high and low pay in the UK and found the porportion of low-paid jobs based on hourly pay fell to 8.9% in 2023 from 10.7% last year, the lowest since comparable records began. Some 1.3% employees are paid below the national minimum wage.
The ASHE is based on employer responses for a 1% sample of employee jobs, using HMRC pay as you earn (PAYE) records.
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