London has the biggest gender pay gap in the UK according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS)
London might have had the smallest gender pay gap in the UK 20 years ago, but today it has the largest, according to new analysis from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Women working full-time in London earned 15.1 per cent less per hour, on average, than their male counterparts 20 years ago. This has only narrowed slightly, according to the ONS, to 14.6 per cent now.
That led the ONS to say:
London is now the region with the biggest pay gap, on average, between male and female full-time workers in the UK.
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The ONS looked at the change in the gender gap for full-time and part-time workers across regions, sectors and ages.
It found that in Northern Ireland, women earn 3.4 per cent more per hour, on average, than their male counterparts, marking the only region in the UK where the pay gap has been in favour of women, and this has been the case since 2010.
Meanwhile, the gap in Wales and Scotland has narrowed over the last 20 years, with women earning 6.3 per cent and 6.6 per cent per hour less than men, respectively. In 1997, women earned 17.5 per cent less than men in Wales, and 18.4 per cent less in Scotland.
The gender pay difference for older women working part-time has dropped substantially, with pay levels now nearly identical to their younger counterparts.
Among part-time workers, the picture looked a little different regionally. The gender pay gap has reversed in some places, and women now earn more, on average, than men across all regions. The pay differences are largest in Northern Ireland, London and Wales.
In October, it was revealed that UK’s gender pay gap had fallen to the lowest since records began in April – although it still stood at 9.1 per cent, according to official figures.
The government is making efforts to address pay disparity, announcing that firms with 250 or more employees will have to publish their gender pay gap as measured by both mean and median averages by April, as well as gender bonus gap. But so far, firms have been slow to provide the data.
As of today, just over 260 employers have released the information out of around 9,000 that will need to.
Read more: The UK’s gender pay gap is at its smallest since records began