“Overall, employees from certain ethnic groups such as Indian and Chinese, have higher average earnings than their White British counterparts. However, all other ethnic groups have average wages lower than for White British employees, with employees from the Bangladeshi ethnic group having the largest pay gap.
“However, once characteristics such as education and occupation are taken into account, the pay gap between White British and most other ethnic groups becomes narrower, though significant differences still remain.”
This report presents statistics on earnings and employment for different ethnic groups in Great Britain. We present raw ethnicity pay gaps for the UK and also use regression analysis to provide more insight into the factors which affect pay for different ethnic groups.
- This report presents the first analysis of ethnicity pay gaps in Great Britain using newly reweighted earnings data from the Annual Population Survey.
- This new analysis shows that employees of Chinese, Indian and Mixed or Multiple ethnicity all had higher median hourly pay than White British employees in 2018; while employees in the Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic groups had lowest median hourly pay.
- In 2018, on average, employees from the Chinese ethnic group earned 30.9% more than White British employees; while employees from the Bangladeshi ethnic group, on average, earned 20.2% less than White British employees.
- The percentage difference in median hourly pay between people of a White ethnicity and all those who belong to an ethnic minority group is largest in London at 21.7%.
- The existing pay gap between White British and other ethnic groups is generally smaller for younger employees than it is for older employees.
- The ethnicity pay gap between White British employees and most other ethnic groups narrows once other characteristics such as education and occupation are taken into account, however, some significant gaps still remain, particularly for those born outside of the UK.
Great Britain’s (England, Scotland, Wales) employee workforce includes people from a number of different ethnic groups. The most prominent ethnic group is White British, estimated to account for 79.5% of the working population, followed by White Other (7.9%) and Black African, Caribbean or Black British (3.2%).
The ethnic groups that make up the smallest proportions of those employed within Great Britain are the Bangladeshi and Chinese ethnic groups, at 0.7% and 0.5% respectively. The estimates of average hourly pay and subsequently the pay gaps are likely to be more volatile or inaccurate for the ethnic groups with smaller sample sizes such as these.
The White Other ethnic group (referring to any person who identifies ethnically as white but does not identify as British, for example, those who might identify as White Australian or White European) is the most prominent ethnic group other than White British. This is likely because of the UK being a part of the European Economic Area where the free movement of persons is one of the core rights of citizens of any member country. Other large groups such as the Indian ethnic group are members of the Commonwealth of Nations and formerly had rights to migrate to the UK.
