Gender pay gap falls to 7.4% in 2020

The headline gender pay gap is 7.4% in April 2020, down from the revised figure of 9.0% for 2019, latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveals.

The ONS headline gender pay gap figure is based on median hourly earnings (excluding overtime) for full-time employees. On this basis, female employees earned 92.6% of male employees' hourly pay in April 2020.

The gender pay gap data is published in the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) 2020. The ASHE also provides official figures for April 2020 on annual, weekly and hourly pay and overtime pay, broken down by sector, standard industrial classification and occupation.

The ASHE 2020 statistics include details of pay for furloughed workers. However, the ONS says that its analysis "suggests that coronavirus (COVID-19) factors did not have a notable impact on the gender pay gap in 2020, and that changes reported in this bulletin reflect underlying employment patterns".

We report on the ASHE 2020 data on the gender pay gap. We have also published a separate analysis of the headline figures from ASHE 2020.