You asked
1) Are ASHE figures a snapshot taken from an annual, current (last April) employer questionnaire? My interpretation is this cannot be used to measures earnings for females in the future. Is this correct?
2) Please confirm that the comparable difference between earnings for 'all employees' and for 'all female employees' have changed significantly over the last 40/20 years. (Please confirm that the difference in earnings between males and females over the 40-year period has reduced by some 36.1% and over the last 10 years, all employees against females, reduced by 11.1%).
3) When profiling an individual's career into the future, the individual circumstances; motivation, aspiration, etc. all need to be taken into consideration. Please confirm this is not something the ASHE figures are able to assist with and that, while earnings for 'females' may be most useful in matching current male and female salaries (as would be required in an equal pay case for example), when projecting careers for the future and taking into consideration historical trends, the figure for 'all employees' may prove the most useful.
We said
Thank you for your request. Responding to each of your points in turn:
1) We can confirm that the latest ASHE figures are indeed a snapshot taken from an annual employer questionnaire and represent our best estimate of average female earnings as at April 2016. They should not be used as a measure of average female earnings at some point in the future and we do not make any such forecasts.
2) We cannot comment on the trend in average male and female earnings over the last 40 years as the data were collected on a different basis before 1997 and so are not directly comparable. However we can confirm that the 'all employees' median gender pay gap (which represents the difference in male and female median gross hourly earnings (excluding overtime), expressed as a percentage of male median earnings) has decreased from 27.5% to 18.1% in the UK between April 1997 and April 2016 (see Table 6 of the spreadsheet published on our website here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/datasets/ashe1997to2015selectedestimates). This means that, although males still earn more than females on average, the gap between male and female average earnings has decreased over the last 20 years. However we cannot speculate about how exactly that trend will continue into the future.
3) We cannot comment on whether the 'all employees' figure better represents the average future earnings of a female employee than the 'female' figure. As explained in Point 1, we do not forecast future earnings. Forecasting is a complex process and there are many factors which could potentially affect future average earnings of males and females. Other parties/organisations may use ASHE data to forecast future earnings but it is not something that ONS do. Our focus is on producing the best possible estimates of current average earnings.