Legislative Gender Pay Gap 2021 (including temporary census field workforce)

The following information includes our temporary census workforce for 2021, where approximately 20,000 colleagues were recruited for a short period, usually less than three months, to support the data collection process.

This temporary workforce is employed on a simple spot-rate pay structure, designed specifically for this workforce, with roles spanning three different levels and within three different geographical pay scales.

This temporary workforce must be included in our legislative return given their employment status, albeit short-term, but the data in the earlier part of the report, where this temporary workforce is not included, provides a more realistic assessment of the UKSA’s current practice.

Gender Representation within the UK Statistics Authority, including the temporary census workforce (March 2021)

• 51.2% of our total workforce are women – this is a lower proportion than in our permanent workforce (56.6%)

Hourly Pay

• The mean hourly pay gap is 1.7%, in favour of men
• The median hourly pay gap is 10.6%, in favour of men
• The table below shows hourly pay by quartile; there is a marginally higher proportion of men (compared to women) in the top quartile

When including the temporary census workforce, the mean gender pay gap decreases from 7.7%, to 1.7% in favour of men. This can be attributed to the gender pay gap within the temporary workforce being only 1.5% in favour of males, a lower gap than in the permanent workforce. As the temporary census workforce is nearly four times the size of the permanent workforce, when combined this results in the overall 1.7% pay gap, bringing a normalising effect.

The median pay gap (10.6%) is higher than what we see in the permanent workforce alone (2.0%), with both being in favour of men. This higher gap when including the temporary workforce is due to a higher proportion of males being paid in the higher salary ranges. While the 10.6% seems large, particularly compared to the mean gap (1.7%), this can occur when working with pay brackets, where the median individual can fall just to one side of a bracket or the other, and see quite a jump in salary. In this instance, if only a small number of males and females had been hired below or above the median respectively, the gap could have been cut in half.

Bonus Pay

• 18.3% of women were awarded a bonus
  14.0% of men were awarded a bonus

The 20,000 additional temporary census field employees were not eligible for bonus pay, however are included in the calculations for a percentage of individuals receiving a bonus. This explains why only a relatively small proportion of the workforce appears to have received a bonus.

• The mean gender bonus pay gap is 15.6%, in favour of men
• The median gender bonus gap is 16.7%, in favour of men

The bonus gaps are largely caused by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Women were more likely to have reduced working hours to meet parental or caring commitments, impacting their ability to be recognised for their efforts. It should however be noted that whilst people temporarily modified working patterns and hours, contractual pay was protected. In addition, we also temporarily introduced a higher bonus amount to recognise extraordinary contributions of some people in response to the pandemic – over two thirds of recipients for these higher awards were male, a proportion likely to have been increased by the high numbers of women with adjusted working hours.

Data included in this Report

Salary and workforce information for all staff paid via our payroll as at 31 March 2021 including bonus payments made between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021.
The calculations follow current legislative requirements, and we confirm the data reported is accurate.