Gender pay gap in the UK: 2025

Commentary on topics covered in the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) is split between this three separate bulletins. The other two can be found on the following pages:bulletin and two others. These are:

• our Employee earnings in the UK: 2025 bulletin
• our Low and high pay in the UK: 2025 bulletin

• The gender pay gap has been decreasing slowly over time; over the last decade it has fallen by more than a quarter among full-time employees, and in April 2025, it stood at 6.9%, down from 7.1% in April 2024.
• Men in full-time employment earned more than women in full-time employment in all major occupation groups in April 2025.
• The gender pay gap is larger for employees aged 40 years and over than for those aged under 40 years.
• The gender pay gap is larger among high-paid employees than among lower-paid employees, and women employees’ share in high-paying occupations decreases with age.
• The gender pay gap among full-time employees was higher in every English region than it was in Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland, in April 2025.
• The gender pay gap measures the difference between median hourly earnings (excluding overtime) of men and women, as a proportion of men's median hourly earnings (excluding overtime). It is a measure across all jobs in the UK, not of the difference in pay between men and women for doing the same job.

In April 2025, median hourly earnings (excluding overtime) for full-time employees were £20.27 for men and £18.87 for women; for part-time employees, they were £13.85 for men and £14.25 for women.

To measure the gender pay gap between men and women employees, we use median hourly earnings (excluding overtime). We define the gender pay gap as the difference between the median hourly earnings (excluding overtime) of men and women, expressed as a proportion of men's median hourly earnings (excluding overtime). For example, in April 2025, median hourly earnings (excluding overtime) were £20.27 for men and £18.87 for women. The resulting gender pay gap for employees was 6.9%.

A positive gender pay gap reflects that men are paid more than women, and a negative gender pay gap reflects the opposite. The larger the gender pay gap in absolute terms, the larger the difference in pay between men and women. A gender pay gap of 50% would reflect that men are paid twice as much as women, and a gender pay gap of 0% would reflect that men and women are paid the same.

This gender pay gap measure is an unconditional measure, which means that it measures differences in pay for men and women employees across the UK, or across all employees within a group, such as a specific occupation, industry or age group. It is not a measure of the difference in pay between men and women in the same employment and with similar skills and experience. It also does not take skills, experience or differences in other characteristics into account.

The gender pay gap among full-time employees was 6.9% in April 2025, down from 7.1% in April 2024. The gender pay gap in April 2024 was 7.1% in the revised ASHE 2024, up from 7% in the provisional ASHE 2024 data we published in October 2024. ASHE data is published as provisional on the year, with the revised and final data published in the subsequent release.

Among all employees, the gender pay gap decreased to 12.8% in April 2025, down from 13.1% in April 2024. For part-time employees, the gender pay gap was negative 2.9% in April 2025, meaning that women in part-time employee jobs earned more than men in part-time employee jobs. This was a decrease from April 2024, where it was negative 3.0%.

The gender pay gap is higher for all employees than it is for full-time or part-time employees. This is because there are more part-time employees who are women, as described in our Decoding the gender pay gap blog post. Part-time employees have lower hourly median pay, compared with full-time employees. ASHE data show that, among employees, approximately 85% of men were working full-time, compared with approximately 61% of women, in April 2025.

The gender pay gap has been decreasing slowly over time. Over the last decade, it has reduced by approximately a quarter among both full-time employees and all employees.

The gender pay gap for full-time employees is largest among the highest earners and smallest among the lowest earners. As Figure 3 shows, the gender pay gap among employees in the 90th percentile (those who earn more than 90% of other employees, but less than the remaining 10%) was 15.2% in April 2025, much higher than the gender pay gap among employees in the median or 50th percentile (6.9%). These figures are also substantially higher than the gender pay gap among employees in the 10th percentile (those earning more than 10% of other employees but less than the remaining 90%), at 1.8%.

The gender pay gap for full-time employees in the top decile (90th percentile) has also experienced a slower decline over time, compared with the gender pay gap for employees at the median and bottom decile. The gender pay gap between 1997 and 2025 has decreased by 10.5 and 11.8 percentage points for the median and 10th percentile employee earners, respectively. However, it has only decreased by 5.5 percentage points for employee earners in the 90th percentile

The gender pay gap is positive for full-time employees in all nine major occupation groups, which means that median hourly earnings (excluding overtime) are higher for men than for women in all these occupation groups. In April 2025, the gender pay gap was largest for:

• skilled trades occupations (13.9%)
• associate professional and technical occupations (12.5%)
• process plant and machine operatives (12.3%)

These major occupations also had the largest gender pay gaps in April 2024.

The interactive chart in Figure 5 allows you to compare the gender pay gap for all occupations at a detailed level, in terms of median gross hourly earnings (excluding overtime) for full-time, part-time and all employees. You can see what the gender pay gap was in April 2025 for your occupation by searching for or selecting your occupation from the drop-down list. Select "full-time", "part-time" or "all" to see the specific gender pay gap for an occupation in each of these employee types.

Figure 5: Explore the gender pay gap by occupation

Gender pay gap for median gross hourly earnings (excluding overtime), all employees, full-time employees, and part-time employees, by occupation, April 2025

Notes:

1. Estimates for 2025 are provisional.    
2. Employee jobs include those on adult rates with pay unaffected by absence. 
3. Full-time is defined as employees working more than 30 paid hours per week, or 25 or more for the teaching professions.    
4. The gender pay gap measures the difference between men's and women's hourly earnings (excluding overtime) as a percentage of men's hourly earnings (excluding overtime). 
5. Some occupations can be included in more than one grouping.    
6. Some data are unavailable as they are considered unreliable because of a small sample size.  
7. The quality of earnings estimates vary by occupation; quality measures are available in our accompanying datasets. 

The gender pay gap is largest for employees aged 40 years and over. This pattern has been generally observed since 1997 and shows that the gender pay gap increases considerably around the age of 40 years, and may be a result of the impact of motherhood. More information on this topic is available in our Impact of motherhood on monthly employee earnings and employment status, England: April 2014 to December 2022.

The gender pay gap for full-time employees aged 40 to 49 years was 9.1%, substantially higher than that for those aged 30 to 39 years (3.9%), in April 2025.

The gender pay gap for full-time employees in April 2025 was lowest for the 22-to-29-years age group, at 0.9%, and highest for the 50-to-59-years and 60-years-and-over age groups, at 12.5% and 12.6%, respectively.

The proportion of women in high-paying occupations (those where pay increases with age and experience) decreases with age.

In the top three high-paid occupational groups, Figure 7 shows how the proportion of women in professional occupations decreases with age. People aged 40 years and over are positioned further to the left of the x-axis than younger age groups. It is also in these occupational groups where median hourly earnings (excluding overtime) increase more substantially with age (people aged 40 years and over are positioned higher on the y-axis than younger age groups).

For example, 52% of employees in professional occupations aged 22 to 29 years were women, while only 42.7% of employees aged 50 to 59 years were women. At the same time, median hourly earnings (excluding overtime) for professional occupations were £20.54 for employees aged 22 to 29 years, and £28.76 for employees aged 50 to 59 years. In comparison, for employees in occupational groups that have lower pay progression, the proportion of women does not decrease with age. These occupations include caring, leisure, and other service occupations, or elementary occupations. All age groups in these occupational groups are positioned at a similar height on the y-axis.

Figure 7: The proportion of women decreases with age in occupations where pay increases with age, including for managers, directors, and senior officials

Median gross hourly earnings (excluding overtime) by the percentage of full-time employees in each group who are women, for age and occupation group, UK, 2025

Notes:

1. Estimates for 2025 are provisional. 
2. Employee jobs include those on adult rates with pay unaffected by absence. 
3. Full-time is defined as employees working more than 30 paid hours per week, or 25 or more for the teaching professions.  
4. Occupations are defined by the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) 2020. 
   

The gender pay gap varied substantially between regions in April 2025. It was lower in Northern Ireland (1.1%), Wales (1.9%) and Scotland (3.5%) than in every region of England. This is a different pattern from April 1997, when the gender pay gap was lowest in London, as shown in Figure 8.

London and the South East were the regions with the largest gender pay gap in April 2025. This is likely to be partly because London and the South East have a higher proportion of employees earning the highest wages. The largest gender pay gaps are in the top-earning occupations.

Gender pay gap differences between regions are largely caused by differences in the composition of the employee workforce between regions. Also, women are more likely than men to accept lower pay in favour of a shorter commute, as we explored in our The commuting gap: women are more likely than men to leave their jobs over a long commute analysis. This can affect the number of women moving into managerial positions and therefore, lead to an increase in the gender pay gap in those regions.

Figure 8: The gender pay gap is higher in all English regions than in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland

Gender pay gap for median gross hourly earnings (excluding overtime) for full-time employees, by work region, UK, April 1997 and 2025

Notes:

1. Estimates for 2025 are provisional. 
2. Employee jobs include those on adult rates with pay unaffected by absence. 
3. Full-time is defined as employees working more than 30 paid hours per week, or 25 or more for the teaching professions.  
4. Figures represent the difference between men's and women's hourly earnings (excluding overtime) as a percentage of men's hourly earnings (excluding overtime).

The gender pay gap

The gender pay gap is calculated as the difference between average hourly earnings (excluding overtime) of men and women, as a proportion of average hourly earnings (excluding overtime) of men's earnings. This means that a positive value for the gender pay gap indicates that, on average, men earn more than women. A negative value indicates that, on average, women earn more than men.

Our gender pay gap measure uses hourly earnings, instead of weekly or annual earnings, to better account for the fact that men work more hours per week on average than women. The gender pay gap estimates presented here do not include overtime. Overtime can skew the results, because men work more overtime hours on average than women.

Full-time and part-time

Full-time is defined as employees working more than 30 paid hours per week, or 25 or more hours for the teaching professions. Part-time is defined as employees working less than or equal to 30 paid hours per week, or less than or equal to 25 hours for the teaching professions.

Standard Occupational Classification

The Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) is a common classification of occupational information for the UK.

Data sources

The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) collects information on actual payments made to the employee and the hours on which this pay was calculated. It is based on employer responses for a 1% sample of employees, using HM Revenue and Customs Pay As You Earn (PAYE) records to identify individuals’ current employers. All estimates for 2025 are provisional and relate to the pay period that includes 30 April 2025. Estimates for 2024 have been revised and relate to the pay period that includes 17 April 2024.

The ASHE achieved sample in 2025 was 174,000. The ASHE sample size was reduced during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic because of the challenges to data collection, from around 180,000 each year to less than 150,000 in 2020, 2021 and 2022. The ASHE sample size started recovering in 2023 and is now at its highest since 2020.

The analysis in this bulletin is based mainly on weekly pay, which is affected by both hourly rates of pay and hours worked or paid for. Our Low and high pay in the UK: 2025 bulletin looks in more detail at the distribution of pay based on hourly rates. This is particularly relevant for policy around the National Living Wage and National Minimum Wage rates.

Data methods

ASHE data are weighted to UK population totals from the Labour Force Survey (LFS), based on classes defined by region, occupation, age and sex.

From 2021, we moved our occupation coding to Standard Occupation Classification 2020 (SOC 2020), from SOC 2010. This means estimates for earnings in April 2021 on an SOC 2020 basis represent a break in the ASHE time series. Estimates will not be directly comparable with estimates for earnings on an SOC 2010 basis and, as such, should not be used in direct comparison with each other.

The composition of the employee workforce (the types of workers and the types of jobs) affects ASHE estimates. This can vary year on year. Differences in levels and growth rates in ASHE estimates reflect both changes in earnings and changes in the composition of the employee workforce, both in the overall UK population and in the ASHE sample.

Employers are asked to report employees' pay for the pay period including the ASHE reference date, which is set in April but varies year on year. The ASHE reference date is determined by the need to capture new minimum wage rates that start in early April and is dependent on when the Easter Holidays fall each year. In 2025, the ASHE reference date was on the last day of April (30th April), which was more than 10 days later than in 2024 and 2023, when the reference date was 17th and 19th April, respectively. Seasonal differences and the timing of Easter may lead to changes in businesses’ responses to ASHE year on year.

In 2024, we introduced changes to the way we validated data, particularly higher earners’ returns, to both the ASHE 2023 revised and 2024 provisional data. These changes have now been fully embedded into the ASHE standard production cycle for the foreseeable future, improving ASHE estimates of earnings of high earners within each occupation. However, these changes have not been applied to our back series and comparisons between 2022 and 2023 data should be treated with caution.

Since 2020, during and after the coronavirus pandemic, ASHE has shown some differences, compared with other earnings data sources, such as our Average Weekly Earnings dataset and our Earnings and employment from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information datasets. There are inherent reasons for differences between ASHE and other earnings data sources, as set out in our Comparison of labour market data sources methodology.

Additionally, it is likely that the following factors are contributing to the divergence between ASHE and other data sources since 2020:

• differential non-response
• weighting to the LFS
• increased variance because of sample size reduction
• the way the bonus element of ASHE is captured

We are currently investigating possible further reasons for these differences, including carrying out reviews of our statistical methods to ensure they are up-to-date and adequate for the wider uses of ASHE data. Our plans to continue improving the quality of ASHE can be found in our accompanying blog, How the ONS is improving its annual earnings survey.

Uncertainty

Sampling variability for ASHE estimates are provided in our accompanying datasets.

More quality and methodology information

Our guide to interpreting ASHE estimates methodology addresses common questions about our data.

More quality and methodology information on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our ASHE methodology and guidance and in our ASHE, Low pay and ASHE pension results QMI.

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in June 2013. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled “accredited official statistics”.