Around six percent
The gender pay gap is not getting smaller
January 18, 2024, 10:10 a.m
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The adjusted pay gap between genders remains at six percent. Even with comparable jobs, qualifications and employment histories, women receive less wages per hour than men.
The adjusted wage gap between the genders in Germany is around six percent. This was reported by the Federal Statistical Office. The adjusted gender pay gap takes into account higher part-time quotas for women and also lower salaries in jobs typical of women.
Even with comparable jobs, qualifications and employment histories, women earn six percent less gross hourly wages than men. The authority suspects that interruptions in employment, for example during pregnancy, to raise children or to care for relatives, play a role, but these are not recorded in more detail.
The unadjusted wage gap between women and men in the German labor market did not narrow last year either. Women in Germany earned an average of 20.84 euros per hour, around 18 percent less than men. This unadjusted gender pay gap was also 18 percent in the previous year. Over the years, the gender pay gap has narrowed somewhat; in 2006 it was still 23 percent.
The unadjusted gender pay gap compares the gross income of all women with that of all men in Germany – regardless of whether they have different jobs and how long they work. The statistics office explains almost two thirds of the difference between the unadjusted and adjusted wage gap through the higher part-time rates and lower salaries in jobs typical of women.
The statistics also clearly show that gross hourly earnings begin to diverge more from the age of 30. At this age, many women have children and interrupt their working lives. While hourly wages for women remained almost stagnant throughout their working lives, they continued to rise regularly for men. The unadjusted wage gap was around eight percent for 30-year-olds and 27 percent for employees between 57 and 61 years old.