The UK Gender Pay Gap by Career: What HMRC Graduate Data Reveals
We analysed gender pay gap data from HMRC tax records across 28 degree subjects and hundreds of occupations. The gap is real, but it varies enormously by field.
The UK gender pay gap is 14.3% for all employees and 7.7% for full-time employees, according to the latest ONS data. These headline figures are widely reported. What is rarely discussed is how dramatically the gap varies by career, by industry, and by time — and how HMRC tax records paint a more detailed picture than any survey.
We analysed the Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) dataset, which tracks real graduate earnings through the tax system, alongside ONS ASHE occupation data. Here is what the numbers actually show.
The Graduate Gender Pay Gap: Subject by Subject
The LEO dataset breaks down earnings by gender for every degree subject at 1, 3, 5, and 10 years after graduation. This is not survey data — it is what HMRC recorded graduates as earning through PAYE.
Subjects with the Largest Gender Pay Gap (10 years after graduation)
| Subject | Men (Median) | Women (Median) | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Economics | £85,000 | £52,000 | 39% |
| Business and management | £48,000 | £33,500 | 30% |
| Computing | £52,000 | £38,500 | 26% |
| Law | £48,000 | £36,000 | 25% |
| Engineering | £55,000 | £43,000 | 22% |
| Mathematical sciences | £60,000 | £44,000 | 27% |
| Physics and astronomy | £55,000 | £40,000 | 27% |
Source: LEO Graduate Outcomes, Tax Year 2022-23, First-degree, UK domiciled, 10 years after graduation
Economics has the largest gap of any subject at 39%. A male Economics graduate earns a median of £85,000 ten years out — a female Economics graduate earns £52,000. Same degree. Same number of years. A £33,000 difference.
Subjects with the Smallest Gender Pay Gap
| Subject | Men (Median) | Women (Median) | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nursing and midwifery | £35,500 | £35,300 | 0.6% |
| Education and teaching | £28,000 | £27,500 | 2% |
| Medicine and dentistry | £62,000 | £58,000 | 6% |
| Allied health | £33,500 | £32,000 | 4% |
| Veterinary sciences | £42,000 | £41,000 | 2% |
Nursing, education, and veterinary science have near-zero gaps. The common factor: regulated pay structures. NHS Agenda for Change bands, teacher pay scales, and professional fee-based work leave little room for negotiation-driven pay differences.
Medicine is interesting — a 6% gap is small for a high-earning field, likely because hospital doctors are paid on standardised grades regardless of gender. The gap that does exist may reflect differences in specialty choice (surgery tends to be male-dominated and higher paid than general practice).
Why the Gap Exists: Three Factors the Data Reveals
1. Industry Sorting
Men and women with the same degree often enter different industries. Male Economics graduates are overrepresented in investment banking, hedge funds, and trading — the highest-paying roles available. Female Economics graduates are more evenly distributed across consulting, public policy, and corporate finance, which pay well but not at the same extreme.
This is not just about “choice” — it reflects hiring patterns, workplace culture, and systemic factors that steer men and women toward different employers even within the same field.
2. The Motherhood Effect
The single largest driver of the gender pay gap is the impact of caring responsibilities on career trajectory. The data shows this clearly:
- At 1 year after graduation, the gender pay gap is typically 2-5% across most subjects
- At 5 years, it widens to 10-15% in many fields
- At 10 years, it reaches 20-39% in the worst-affected subjects
This timeline corresponds directly to the period when many women have children. Career breaks, part-time work, and reduced hours during the early parenting years have a compounding effect on earnings that persists for decades.
This is not speculation — the LEO data tracks the same cohort over time, so the widening gap cannot be explained by different people entering the workforce. It is the same graduates, diverging over time.
3. Negotiation and Progression
In fields without standardised pay (tech, finance, law, consulting), salaries are individually negotiated. Research consistently shows that men negotiate more aggressively and more frequently than women, and that negotiation outcomes compound over time. A 5% difference in starting salary becomes a 30% difference over 10 years of percentage-based raises.
This explains why regulated professions (nursing, teaching, medicine) have small gaps while unregulated ones (business, computing, finance) have large gaps. When pay is a formula, the gap nearly disappears. When pay is a negotiation, it widens.
The Gap by Occupation (ASHE Data)
Looking beyond graduates at the broader workforce, the ONS ASHE data reveals similar patterns:
Largest Gaps (Full-time employees)
| Occupation | Men (Median) | Women (Median) | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chief executives and senior officials | £82,000 | £62,000 | 24% |
| Financial managers and directors | £67,000 | £48,000 | 28% |
| Marketing and sales directors | £62,000 | £45,000 | 27% |
| IT directors | £72,000 | £55,000 | 24% |
| Solicitors | £55,000 | £42,000 | 24% |
Smallest Gaps
| Occupation | Men (Median) | Women (Median) | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nurses | £35,500 | £35,000 | 1% |
| Secondary school teachers | £42,000 | £41,000 | 2% |
| Police officers (sergeant and below) | £42,000 | £41,500 | 1% |
| Pharmacists | £44,000 | £42,000 | 5% |
| Civil service administrative officers | £26,000 | £25,500 | 2% |
The pattern holds: negotiation-based pay means bigger gaps; formula-based pay means smaller gaps.
What Is Actually Changing?
The good news: the gender pay gap has been narrowing. For full-time workers, it has fallen from 17.4% in 2000 to 7.7% in 2024. For workers under 30, it is now close to zero in many occupations.
Several factors are driving the change:
- Pay transparency — Mandatory gender pay gap reporting (for employers with 250+ staff) since 2017 has put pressure on the worst offenders
- Education — Women now outnumber men in higher education and outperform them academically, which is narrowing the entry-level gap
- Cultural shift — More companies are standardising pay bands and reducing the role of individual negotiation
- Shared parental leave — Uptake is still low (around 2-5%), but awareness is increasing
The bad news: at the current rate of change, it will take approximately 30 years to close the full-time gap entirely. And the gap for women over 40 has barely moved in a decade.
What This Means for You
If you are a woman entering the workforce: The data shows that the gap at entry level is small (2-5%) but compounds rapidly. Two things matter disproportionately: (1) negotiating your starting salary and (2) maintaining career continuity through your thirties. Even a one-year career break can create a pay differential that takes a decade to recover from.
If you are choosing a career: Fields with standardised pay structures (healthcare, education, civil service) have near-zero gender pay gaps. Fields with individual negotiation (finance, tech, law) have larger gaps but also higher absolute pay. There is no “right” answer — but the data helps you make an informed choice.
If you are an employer: The data clearly shows that standardised pay bands narrow the gender pay gap more effectively than any other intervention. If your organisation has wide pay ranges within the same role and relies heavily on individual negotiation, your gap is almost certainly larger than your regulated competitors.
If you are negotiating your salary: Know your market rate. Our salary explorer shows median earnings for hundreds of occupations across 12 UK regions. Going into a negotiation with data changes the dynamic entirely.
Explore the Data
The full graduate earnings data, including gender breakdowns by subject, is available on our degree outcomes page. Compare specific career paths side-by-side on our compare tool, and check your salary against the market on the salary explorer.
Explore the data yourself
See real UK salary trajectories across 20+ career paths and 12 regions.
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