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There's a widening gender pay gap in London

Women’s average pay in the city dropped at a much higher rate than men’s last year

Rhian Daly
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Rhian Daly
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money
Photograph: Pigprox/Shutterstock
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On top of everything else that it’s given us so far, we’ve now got one more thing we can thank the Covid-19 pandemic for – worsening London’s gender pay gap. 

Figures in the latest Annual Survey For Hours And Earnings (ASHE), which is carried out every year by the Office For National Statistics (ONS), show that while pay for both men and women had decreased in April 2021 compared to the year prior, female workers were worse off. 

Male pay dropped by 0.1 per cent compared to female pay lowering by 2.9 per cent. Men earned on average £50,592, while women earned on average £33,413 – a difference of £17,179.  

The pay gap is slightly smaller when looking at full-time workers’ pay, with men earning around £56,811 and women on £42,081, giving a chasm of £14,730. 

The gender pay gap looking at the UK as a whole is now 7.9 per cent. In April 2020, it had fallen to 7 per cent. Nicola White, the head of earnings at ONS said the change in the country’s gender pay gap is ‘in line with the general downward trend of recent years but was actually up on last year’s figure, when wages and hours worked were disrupted by the onset of Covid-19’. 

London pay, in general, fell by 1.9 per cent in April 2021 compared to the same period in 2020, with wages falling slightly faster than the UK’s national average. 

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