• Friday, March 29, 2024

UK

Indians earn almost £10,000 a year more than their white British counterparts in the UK, data shows

By: ShelbinMS

THOUGH young white Britons are outearned by their black Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) workers, Indian and Chinese workers in the UK outearn their white British counterparts by almost £10,000 a year, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revealed.

The ONS found that between 2012 and 2019, Chinese, white Irish, white and Asian, and Indian ethnicities earned more on average than white British employees.

However most of the groups, including Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Arab, consistently earned less than white British employees over the same period, reported The Telegraph.

The biggest gaps were between Pakistani workers (£10.55 per hour) and white British (£12.49 per hour), while white Irish workers earned £17.55 per hour on average.

“The fact that in some parts of the UK, BAME workers are paid a quarter less is a shaming indictment of the structural discrimination in our society,” said Rehana Azam, national secretary, GMB, Britain’s general union.

“These shocking figures come just days after the prime minister’s own race relations adviser, Lord Woolley, said that the government has ‘zero plans’ to address the breadth of racial inequality in this country

“We urgently need mandatory employer ethnicity pay gap reporting to the introduced, tough action against discriminatory employers, and a comprehensive plan to address the structural causes of unequal treatment in our society.’

Researchers found that there was a 2.3 per cent gap in earnings, the smallest since 2012, between white and ethnic minority employees in England and Wales in 2019,

White employees earned on average £12.40 per hour, compared with £12.11 for those in 17 ethnic minority groups on average.

The gap is calculated as the difference between the average hourly earnings of ethnic groups and white or white British employees, as a proportion of the average hourly earnings of the latter.

In 2019, ethnic minority men earned 6.1 per cent less than white men whilst the hourly pay of ethnic minority women was 2.1 per cent more than white women.

It was most pronounced in London, at 23.8 per cent, and smallest in Wales, at 1.4 per cent, the ONS said.

Ethnic minority employees aged 30 and over tend to earn less than their white counterparts, while those aged 16-29 tend to earn more, the ONS found.

The ONS analysed data on earnings from the Annual Population Survey (APS).

Taking into account factors such as age, sex, marital status, children, qualifications, country of birth and location of employees narrows the gap for many ethnic groups, the ONS found.

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