A survey carried out by online finance tool MySalaryCalculator.co.uk found that the UK still has a significant gender pay gap, with men earning over £5,000 more a year on average than women.
The study, based on information provided by 4,578 participants between July and September 2012, revealed that the median salary currently stands at £29,120 for men and £24,000 for women.
This suggests the pay gap is bigger than the 9.1 per cent reported by the Office for National Statistics last year, which looked at average earnings on a per hour basis.
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Meanwhile, according to mathematician Dr David Fishwick, who carried out statistical analysis on the MySalaryCalculator.co.uk data, the figures show that men are almost statistically certain to earn several thousand pounds more per year than women.
“The survey found that with almost statistical certainty (99.5 per cent), men typically earn between £4,907 and £7,491 more than women,” he said.
The study also revealed that, as well as typically receiving higher pay, there is also more variation among men’s salaries, with more males appearing to be in high and low-paid jobs in comparison to women, who are more likely to earn closer to the average salary.
Commenting on the study, Dr Catherine Hakim, a visiting professor at the Social Science Research Center in Berlin, said: “It is interesting to get the information on the greater dispersion of male earnings among full-time workers, a point that is never revealed clearly by the government’s annual ASHE (Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings) results on the pay gap.
“It is well-established that women work in a narrower range of jobs than men. Now we know that their earnings are also heavily clustered around the average, whereas male workers include lots of high-earners and also lots of low-earners.”
