An independent statistician using data to understand our world and to predict the future
On 24th March 2020, the UK government suspended enforcement of the gender pay gap reporting deadline of 5th April. As of today, just under 50% of employers have reported their 2019 gender pay gap figures. Despite this shortfall, I have used statistical imputation methods to calculate that the median gender pay gap narrowed in 2019 from 9.6 pence in the pound to 9.0-9.2 pence in the pound.
[Read more…] about Pay Gap Trends #3 – Did the UK gender pay gap narrow in 2019?
In April, I was asked to analyse the trends in UK gender pay gaps over the 3 years of mandatory reporting from 2017 to 2019 for Practical Law. They were interested in 7 customised sectors and the links to these can be found in this post.
[Read more…] about Pay Gap Trends #2 – My analysis of 7 sectors for Practical Law magazine
This post was updated on 3rd June 2020 with the latest data
Update 5/4/20 – On 24th March, the government suspended enforcement of the deadline for reporting 2019 gender pay gaps due to the coronavirus outbreak. As of now, Only 40% of employers have reported their 2019 data. Employers are still required to report 2019 data but will not be punished for being late in doing so.
The government requires all organisations employing 250 or more employees to submit gender pay gap data. All data is available to the public and can be found on the government’s gender pay gap website. I have downloaded this data and created a spreadsheet tool to present the data in a more user-friendly and visual format.
[Read more…] about Pay Gaps #15 – Where can I find gender pay gap data for 2019?
This post and the calculator was updated on 24th June 2020
If you are responsible for uploading your gender pay gap figures to the government’s portal, you may want to be sure that your figures are correct. I have analysed the 2017 data and I have identified that between 10-20% of organisations have submitted incorrect data. In most cases, this is because the existing government guidance for your calculations is poorly written and is open to misinterpretation.
Until the government rewrites its guidance to make it easier to understand, why not download my free spreadsheet which will do all the calculations for you?
[Read more…] about Pay Gap Tools #1 – Calculate your gender pay gap with my free calculator!
Updated on 14th May 2020. New and modified links are italicised.
The Coronavirus Pandemic is a worldwide challenge many of us will have not experienced before. It is natural to want to seek information on the risks and in our world today, it has never been easier to find data, analyses and opinions. Unfortunately, a lot of what you will read out there is either unhelpful or actively misleading. As an independent statistician with 30 years experience of explaining statistics to non-statisticians, my contribution to this crisis will be to try and sort the good from the bad hence this post. [Read more…] about Coronavirus #1 – Useful Data and Links
April Fools day 2020 saw the hive mind of social media asking what the sample size should be to measure the extent of the Coronavirus in the UK. I could see that many people responding were reaching for standard methodologies which are usually are based on specifying a desired confidence interval. In doing so, they were overlooking a much more effective and relevant alternative based on the methodology of Acceptance Sampling, first developed by the US Military in World War 2.
[Read more…] about Coronavirus #2 – What sample size does Boris need to lift all restrictions?
Recently, a lot of people have been making incorrect claims about what a gender pay gap tells you. I have been pointing out these errors but in doing so, I am conscious I come across as a pedant or a negative voice. The problem is that the official gender pay gap measure (the difference between the median man and the median woman) is just a single number and that single number does not capture the full nuance of what is going on. I have decided it is time to introduce the Gender Pay Fingerprint to the world as an alternative and going forward, I will be encouraging people to use this instead.
[Read more…] about Pay Gaps #14 – Gender Pay Fingerprints are better than Gender Pay Gaps
The BBC presenter Samira Ahmed has won her claim for equal pay at the employment tribunal. She successfully claimed that Jeremy Vine was an appropriate comparator for her pay. She is not the only female presenter to make a claim with over 50 more claims under consideration at present. Assuming that these are all successful, will these have any effect on the BBC’s gender pay gap for 2019 of 7p in the pound?
On 5th February 2020, Baroness Prosser laid a bill in the House of Lords which calls for the introduction of ethnicity pay gap reporting in addition to a number of other initiatives. Last year I explained why ethnicity pay gap reporting cannot follow the same process as gender pay gap reporting so now is the time to explore how ethnicity pay gap reporting could be carried out.
[Read more…] about Pay Gaps #13 – How could Ethnicity Pay Gap Reporting be introduced in the UK?
The 14th November 2019 is being incorrectly marked as Equal Pay Day in the UK by the Fawcett Society. By having a campaign name that conflates equal pay issues with the gender pay gap, the Fawcett Society runs the risk of misleading men and women in the UK in their understanding of what these two concepts mean.
If you care about statistics being used correctly then please lobby the Fawcett Society to rename this as Gender Pay Gap day instead.
If you care about issues to do with Equal Pay, then please support the #MeTooPay campaign instead. This is a new campaign, led by Dame Moya Greene, who are explicit about the distinction and are saying, quite rightly, that with the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act taking place next year, cases of unequal pay should not be happening in this day and age.
[Read more…] about Pay Gaps #12 – Unequal Pay & Gender Pay Gaps are not the same thing!
