§ Vernon CoakerTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (1) what assessment she has made of the gender pay gap in the private sector for women in(a) full-time and (b) part-time employment; [21780]
(2) if she will publish the most recent figures to show women's mean hourly earnings as a proportion of men's broken down by occupation. [21777]
§ Ruth KellyI have been asked to reply.
The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician. I have asked him to reply.
Letter from Len Cook to Vernon Coaker, dated 12 December 2001:
As National Statistician, I have been asked to reply to your recent Parliamentary Questions about the earnings of women compared to men. (21777, 21780).The New Earnings Survey (NES) can provide hourly earnings data for full-time and part-time employees, broken down by gender. The release of NES data is restricted to figures that are derived from a sufficiently large sample of employees, and have an acceptable level of accuracy. In the attached table, data has been provided for average hourly earnings for males and females and female earnings as a proportion of male earnings by occupation and for the private sector. These are based on the 2000 NES, the latest survey for which data are available.
Average hourly earnings1 of men and women and women's hourly earnings as a proportion of men's hourly earnings by occupation and in the private sector by full-time and part-time2 Men (£) Women (£) Proportion All occupations3 11.26 9.13 0.81 Managers and administrators 17.80 12.83 0.72 Professional occupations 16.44 14.98 0.91 Associate professional and technical occupations 13.78 10.96 0.80 Clerical and secretarial occupations 7.47 7.28 0.97 Craft and related occupations 8.41 6.13 0.73 Personal and protective service occupations 8.60 6.19 0.72 Sales occupations 9.04 6.45 0.71 Plant and machine operatives 7.43 5.83 0.78 Other occupations 6.41 5.22 0.81 Private sector Full-time 11.16 8.50 0.76 Part-time 7.14 6.09 0.85 1 Earnings are for employees on adult rates, whose pay for the survey period was unaffected by absence and exclude overtime. 2 Great Britain, April 2000, not seasonally adjusted. 3 The earnings data by occupation is for full-time employees only. Source:
New Earnings Survey.