{"id":5073,"date":"2023-05-10T18:24:20","date_gmt":"2023-05-10T17:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/?p=5073"},"modified":"2023-06-14T09:28:06","modified_gmt":"2023-06-14T08:28:06","slug":"when-will-the-gender-pay-gap-disappear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/when-will-the-gender-pay-gap-disappear\/","title":{"rendered":"Pay Gap Trends #6 – Are we there yet?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Has 6 years of mandatory gender pay gap reporting (GPGR<\/strong>) made a dent in the UK’s gender pay gap?\u00a0 According to a recent BBC article<\/a>, not one bit at all.\u00a0 Unfortunately, too many people on social media have been taken in by this misleading article and I will be submitting a formal complaint to the BBC soon to get it amended.\u00a0 I rebutted this at the time with this LinkedIn post<\/a> and I will now expand on that here to show what the true trend is and whether or not mandatory pay gap reporting has had an impact.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Employers are not the same as Employees!<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

My first complaint about the BBC article is that nowhere do they make these two critical points<\/p>\n

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  1. The official UK gender pay gap is measured by the Office of National Statistics<\/a> (ONS<\/strong><\/span>) and has been since 1997.<\/li>\n
  2. The GPGR dataset<\/a> (using data from 13400+ employers who have reported data since 2017) is incapable of measuring the UK gender pay gap.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    A brief reminder of the difference between the ONS<\/strong><\/span> data and the GPGR<\/strong><\/span> data which I have explained before.<\/a><\/p>\n

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    1. ONS<\/strong> <\/span>is a random sample of ~180,000 employees<\/strong><\/span> from HMRC’s PAYE database taken every April.<\/li>\n
    2. GPGR<\/strong><\/span> is a census of 13,400+ large employers<\/strong><\/span> (those with a headcount of 250+) based on payroll data as of 31st March (public sector) or 5th April (private sector).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Let’s look into this in more detail.<\/p>\n

      Gender Pay Gap Reporting by ONS<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

      The ONS<\/span><\/strong> pay gap estimates comes from a sample known as ASHE<\/strong> (Annual Survey of Hours & Earnings).<\/a>\u00a0 Every year, around April, a random sample of employees who have a PAYE record on the HMRC database are taken and further information is then sought from their employers.\u00a0 The sample size is typically around 180,000<\/strong> employees from around 60,000<\/strong> employers.\u00a0 The sample results are weighted according to age, gender and occupation based on weights derived from a different survey known as the Labour Force Survey (LFS<\/strong>)<\/a> which produces the official estimates of unemployment, etc.\u00a0 The final set of figures and analysis are published in October of each year.<\/p>\n

      The ASHE sample is used to derive a considerable number of estimates as can be seen in this list<\/a>.\u00a0 For this article, we are interested in the April 2022 ASHE dataset<\/a> from which I note the following –<\/p>\n