2023 gender pay gap report

Published: 16 July 2024 | by Brightmine

This year marks the seventh time that organisations have had to report their gender pay and bonus gaps. While many organisations have increased their efforts to ensure fair pay, many wonder whether progress is actually being made on closing these gaps.

The 2023 gender pay gap data offers valuable insights.

Key findings for the 2023 gender pay gap report

This Brightmine analysis — based on all organisations that uploaded their data to the government portal by 9 a.m. on 5 April 2024 — finds that the median gender pay gap was 9.1% in 2023. This marks only a very small decline from the (revised) 9.2% recorded for 2022.

Overall, since reporting began, the median gender pay gap has declined just 0.2 percentage points from 9.3% in 2017 (although not based on a matched sample).

The pay gap among large organisations was lower than smaller organisations:

Greater progress has been made on the value of bonuses, where the median gap has reduced to 14.1% from 19.4% in 2017. The proportion of male and female employees receiving a bonus has almost reached parity (27.6% and 26.6% respectively).

Proportion of organisations that reduced the pay gap

While overall the gender pay gap has reduced, not all organisations have made progress. Of the 10,410 organisations that submitted data for 2023, 9,735 also reported for 2022, allowing us to track their progress in this area.

Among this matched sample, 49% have reduced their median gender pay gap. By broad sector, organisations in the public services sector are most likely to report a positive movement (53.1%).  

Outside of the public sector, agriculture and forestry organisations reported the most progress, with 56.4% of organisations reducing the pay gap, compared with 41.1% of facilities, security and support employers. 

Much slower progress is evident on closing the gender bonus gap. Three in 10 (31.9%) organisations have recorded a reduction in the median bonus gap since the previous year, although progress was greatest in the finance sector, where 46.2% of organisations reported a reduction. However, as we see in our table below, the finance sector continues to report the highest median gender bonus gap. 

Pay and bonus gaps

The vast majority (78.4%) of organisations have reported a median gender pay gap that favours males, just slightly down on the (revised) 78.9% for 2022. 

We see a different picture when we look at the median gender bonus gap, which is reported in favour of males in 47.3% of organisations. We have also seen above that there is almost parity in the proportion of males and females receiving a bonus across the whole sample.

However, this picture is not replicated across all industries. While the finance sector reports that a median 85.3% of males and 85% of females received a bonus, it also reports the largest gender bonus gap (35.4%) and the vast majority (85.3%) of organisations report that bonuses favour male employees.

Female representation in the top pay quartile

Organisations must report the proportion of male and female employees in the lower, lower middle, upper middle and upper quartile pay bands. Doing so shows the distribution of male and female employees across the organisation. Women are still over-represented in the lower pay quartile, and under-represented in the upper pay quartile, but progress is being made.

In 2023, 56.7% of the employees in the lower pay quartile were female, compared with only 40% of employees in the upper pay quartile. However, some progress is being made, with the proportion of females in the upper pay quartile increasing from 37.3% in 2017 (not based on a matched sample).

These overall figures do, however, mask some stark differences by industry sector. For example, in charities/not for profit, a median 73% of employees in the lower pay quartile are women, while in public services this rises to 76%. In private-sector services there is a more even split, with 53% of employees being female and 47% male in the quartile.

Gender pay gaps by sector

The median gender pay gaps in each sector in 2023 were as follows:

Industry	Gender pay gap
Public services	12.1%
Manufacturing-and-production	9.2%
Private-sector services	8%
Charities/not for profit organisations	2.7%

2023 gender pay gap metrics by industry

Exploring the data further, we see some distinct differences between industries, as shown below:

About the data

All employers with 250 or more employees are legally obliged to report every year on six key metrics about their gender pay gap and gender bonus gap using data inputs and calculations set out in the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017 (SI 2017/172). The Brightmine (formerly XpertHR) analysis covers key findings from the 10,410 gender pay gap report submissions published on the government website by the time we ran our analysis at 9 a.m. on 5 April 2024. Please note that this includes all organisations that have reported, some of which have less than 250 employees.

In this resource, where we mention median, this refers to the midpoint of the reported median hourly pay rate data. Where the mean is referenced, this refers to the midpoint across the reported average (mean) hourly pay rate data. Industries have been assigned based on the standard Brightmine industry classification system.