Help me debunk NHS pay gap... today a colleague said that this article proved the gender pay gap... I tried to argue but seem to come up short, can someone wiser than myself help come up with the right factual based argument!

mikesteane · 2018-10-24T22:12:45+00:00

There is an earnings gap. There is no pay gap.

Miffly · 2018-10-25T12:41:31+00:00

The entire pay gap argument has been debunked many times, but that's another matter.

The NHS has a system of pay scales for each role, meaning that everyone's base take home pay is the same for the same job at the same level. However, extra hours, nights, weekends, etc make a big difference. Anecdotally, male nurses do a huge amount of overtime at lower levels.

As others have suggested, the term 'earnings gap' would be much more appropriate.

thrway_1000 · 2018-10-24T23:48:36+00:00

Archive -- https://archive.is/f8bc9

aussietoads · 2018-10-25T01:52:38+00:00

When people are on salaries, as opposed to wages, then arguing about a gap really comes down to arguing about negotiation skills.

uniquenamereddit · 2018-10-27T12:44:26+00:00

Ok I looked at the actual source linked by this article so you can point that out to your colleague:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2017provisionaland2016revisedresults#gender-pay-differences

(This is linked from your article)

I suggest you read it yourself, but I'll point out relevant parts:

The gender pay gap is calculated as the difference between average hourly earnings (excluding overtime) of men and women [...] Including overtime can skew the results because men work relatively more overtime than women
In April 2017, the gender pay gap (for median earnings) for full-time employees decreased to 9.1% [note, this is per hour excluding overtime]
For part-time employees [...] women are paid more per hour, on average than men. [...] this part-time gender pay gap moved closer to zero, from negative 6.1% in April 2016 to negative 5.1%

NOTE that neither for full time nor for part time is the gap 18%. However:

The net impact of both the full-time and part-time gender pay gaps moving closer to zero, [...], is a marginal increase in the gap for all employees, from 18.2% in 2016 to 18.4% in 2017

So both full time employees and part time employees have the gap decreasing, both are much lower than18%, but if you take them together the gap is 18% and increasing!

How is that possible? Well, statistics is weird.

It's possible because full time employees make much more than part time, and more men work full time than women (and the proportion is increasing). They explicitly stated at the beginning that men work more hours.

This kind of thing is why statistics can be so misleading.

Anyway, as for your debunking - here's what they say afterwards:

Given the strong influence of the balance between full-time and part-time employees, the majority of detailed analyses of the gender pay gap in this bulletin are presented for full-time employees alone.

That's basically what I tried to explain, and why the 18% figure is meaningless.

This next part of the source is the most important part:

It should be noted that the gender pay gap figures presented in this bulletin do not show differences in rates of pay for comparable jobs, as they are affected by factors such as the proportion of men and women working part-time or in different occupations.

So if your colleague is saying that men make more than women for the same work, that is explicitly contradicted by this source!

They explicitly say that their number don't show differences in hourly pay for comparable jobs.

So the 18% pay gap is mostly because more men work full time than women.
The full time gap is "just" 9%, while the part time gap is negative 6% (women make more than men)
they found no difference when comparing people working at the comparable jobs, meaning the entire gap can be explainable by women's choices to work less and work in less hard occupations.

marcooni1 · 2018-10-25T05:44:30+00:00

It is like overall average pay. Most people will earn below that, because what buff it, are people who earn way more than it is.

ShadowBanThisCucks · 2018-10-25T14:35:11+00:00

I wouldn't bother. Either the report convinces you of it's claim, or it doesn't. If you are not convinced, you have no obligation to prove the report is false.

In order to find out the reasons for the earnings gap, you would need to measure the productivity of individual staff. Health care orgs can do this, sort of, if they feel like it, but that info won't be available to you, as a member of the peasantry.

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