Women's pay goes up, but gender pay gap remains: ONS

Women's pay has increased more than the wages earned by men in Britain, but the gender pay gap remains at almost 10 percent, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in a new report Wednesday.

ONS said the gender pay gap for full-time workers was entirely in favor of men for all occupations.

The pay gap has fallen from 10.5 percent in 2011 to 9.1 percent in 2017, but remains positive in value, meaning that on average men are paid more than women, said ONS.

The headline measure for the gender pay gap shows the median gross hourly earnings shows men's pay has grown between 2011 and 2017 by 10.4 percent from 13.12 pounds (18.10 U.S. dollars) to 14.48 pounds per hour while women's pay has grown by 12.0 percent from 11.75 pounds to 13.16 pounds per hour. In 2017, men on average were paid 1.32 pounds more per hour than women, which, as a proportion of men's pay, is a pay gap of 9.1 percent.

For full-time workers, the pay gap is entirely in favor of men, the gap is largest in the skilled trade occupations group at 24.8 percent and smallest in sales and customer service occupations at 3.6 percent.

When looking at age groups, the gap for full-time workers remains small at younger ages, however, from age 40 onwards the pay gap widens reaching its peak between ages 50 to 59, the report added.

The ONS figures show that men and women working full time in the highest-paid occupation group (chief executives and senior officials) earned a median hourly pay of 48.53 pounds and 36.54 pounds respectively. Men also had 72.8 percent of the full-time employment share in this occupation.

A spokesman for ONS said: "The gender pay gap has always been a topic of interest, but in an attempt to increase awareness and improve pay equality, the UK government introduced compulsory reporting of the gender pay gap for organizations with 250 or more employees by April 2018. For the UK as a whole, the gap has reduced in the last 10 years, but is still in favour of men."