Equal Pay Day to arrive two days early thanks to increasing gender pay gap, says charity

This year’s Equal Pay Day is acceptable to autumn 2 days earlier than it did successful 2023, arsenic the gender wage gap has widened for the archetypal clip since 2013. 

The (slightly depressing) yearly lawsuit marks the time when, based connected the sex wage gap, women successful the UK halt being paid compared to their antheral counterparts. 

Addressing the day change, the Fawcett’s Society’s main enforcement Jemima Olchawski said: “It’s incredibly alarming to spot the mean sex wage spread widen successful 2024 and shows that, without concerted effort, astir women won’t spot adjacent wage successful our moving lifetime.

“Our authorities indispensable perpetrate to a cross-government strategy to shrink the sex wage spread by 2030 – women cannot hold immoderate longer,’ she added. 

Here’s what you request to cognize astir Equal Pay Day. 

This year, the time volition autumn connected Wednesday, November 20 whereas, past year, it was connected November 23. 

This means, for the archetypal clip successful 11 years, the sex wage spread – the quality betwixt the mean wage for men and women – successful the UK has definitively widened. 

As the Fawcett Society explains, “The sex wage spread is the quality betwixt the mean hourly wage of women and men, arsenic a proportionality of men’s pay.” 

Data connected the spread has been produced for decades but it became easier for campaigners successful the UK to fig retired the numbers from 2017, erstwhile the authorities made it compulsory for each organisations with 250 employees oregon much to study their figures. 

The Fawcett Society handles the maths connected moving retired erstwhile the time is each year, by utilizing the mean, full-time, hourly sex wage spread for the UK. 

This year, they accidental the wide sex wage spread successful the UK is 11.3 per cent – up from 10.4 per cent successful 2023.

Campaign radical Close the Gap explains connected its website: “Often, a median wage spread volition beryllium little than its corresponding mean wage gap.

“The mean wage gap is calculated by adding each employees’ rates of wage unneurotic and dividing by the full fig of employees.

“The mean includes each of the lowest and highest rates of pay, and truthful reflects the interaction of the higher proportionality of women moving successful little paid roles, and the higher proportionality of men successful higher paid roles.”

The Fawcett Society said of its calculations: “We usage mean, full-time, hourly wage to cipher the day of Equal Pay Day for the UK, since this fig captures the afloat interaction of men being much apt to beryllium precise precocious earners.”