How your pay compares to others around you

New Zealand women’s pay is only slowly catching up to men’s, and in some age brackets the gap is becoming wider.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has released a new experimental data tool that allows people to see how incomes have changed where they live.

‘‘Our tool demonstrates what we can do solely from tax data and is part of ongoing work to develop new statistics using existing data,’’ analytics manager Alan Bentley said. ‘‘For example, we can see that median annual income for women in their early 40s in the Gore district increased from $27,800 in 2009 to $37,400 in 2017.’’

It shows the highest median income in the country in 2017 was in Wellington, where it was $47,800. That includes all income from salary, wages and self-employment.

Men there earnt a median $54,300 and women $41,700.

That gender gap was evident around the country. In Southland in 2017, men earnt a median $51,300 and women $32,300.

Economist Brad Olsen, of Infometrics, said the data showed that the gender pay gap was being addressed slowly at best.

‘‘In 2009, the median wage for a woman was 70.9 per cent of the median wage for a man. In 2017, this gap had closed slightly, with median women’s earnings rising to 71.6 per cent of men’s,’’ he said.

‘‘Younger women are those seeing the slowest growth, and in fact are going backwards. Women aged 25-29 saw a 18 per cent rise in median incomes over the 2009-2017 period, slower than the 23 per cent rise in men’s median wage for the same age group.

‘‘And over the nine-year period, the earnings ratio – women’s earnings as a proportion of men’s earnings – has dropped, from 81.8 per cent of men’s income in 2009 to 78.8 per cent in 2017. The same trend is repeated for women aged 30-34, but produces even lower relative earnings. For the 30-34 age group, women in 2009 earnt 71.4 per cent of the male median earnings, but in 2017 only earnt 68.5 per cent of male median earnings.’’

He said that was concerning because if the gap was not addressed at the earliest stages of a person’s working life, it could become worse over time.

‘‘What these trends show is that we’re not doing enough to ensure that women in the workforce are being paid at the level they should be. What’s concerning is that some of the trends comparing younger ages, which have seen the slowest earning growth, is backwards for women relative to men’s earnings. It’s important that we get the settings right for all employees as they enter the workforce in their earlier years, and by not ensuring that women are being paid at the same level as men in earlier years of employment can lock in problems with relative earnings throughout life.’’

Researcher Jess BerentsonShaw, of The Workshop, said there was too much emphasis put on individual action, such as women being encouraged to push harder for their own pay rises or negotiate more stridently when they took a new job.

She said real change would not happen until the workforce structure was addressed.

‘‘The workforce is structured around men’s lives and their career trajectory... women live significantly different lives to men, especially after they have children.’’

She said it was also important to address ethnic pay gaps. Pakeha women earn more than Pacific Island and Maori men.

‘‘If you have a Pacific Island family that’s a traditional heterosexual couple – that’s two people being underpaid compared to Pakeha.’’