We’re told that the gender pay gap blows out to an incredible 28% for women in their 50s.
No, really, it doesn’t:
The analysis by Rest Less, a jobs, volunteering and advice site for the over-50s, reveals that both sexes reach their peak full-time salaries in their 40s: for women this is £34,665 and for men it is £46,213, a difference of £11,548 or 25%.
But the data shows that the gap grows again over the next decade, with the mean average salary for a woman in her 50s, working full-time, being £32,052 compared with £44,561 for a man in his 50s, a difference of £12,509 or 28%.
As we, the ONS, even the Statistics Ombudsman, have been pointing out over the years we should not - because it is entirely misleading - be using mean wages. Instead, median tells us what it is that we want to know. What also rather worries is this:
The gap between men and women working part-time is 8% for workers aged between 18 and 21. This rises slightly to almost 10% for those in their 20s and again to 12% for those in their 30s.
They’ve got the sign wrong. As ONS points out the part time gender pay gap is in favour of women.
As we like to remind people from time to time we’ll never be able to solve a problem unless we start by identifying reality. Which we should probably start doing.