£6,500 graduate gender pay gap revealed

Five years after finishing their university studies, a gender pay gap means female graduates reportedly earn £6,500 less than male graduates, research from the Department of Education (DoE) has shown.
 
A difference of 18% in wages was noted between successful male and female graduates. The group of male and females holding low-paid jobs a year after graduating were the only group to earn the same amount.

Statistics showed high-earning women are paid £31,000 per year after graduating five years ago, whilst male graduates would earn £37,500 annually.
 
The results came in after the Government’s Department of Education were the first to track university graduate wages in accordance to gender.

Women have been found to be paid less at all wage levels apart from in low-paid jobs. The gender pay gap is said to be increasing every year after leaving university.

 
A year after graduation showed middle-wage male workers already receiving £1,000 more than women in a year, with £17,500. High-flying male earners would be paid an additional £2,000 more than female graduates after 12 months of graduating.
 
Male graduates are then paid an average of £31,000, in stark contrast to the £26,500 earned by female graduates three years after leaving university.
 
Head of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Frances O’Grady, has warned that the figures in the DoE report showed Britain to be almost 50 years away from achieving full pay equality for women.
 
The DoE report reads: “At each of one, three and five years after graduation, male median earnings are greater than female median earnings.”
 
The report adds: “These differences increase with the worker’s age, which may explain some of the increasing gap in earnings between males and females.”