UK Gender Pay Gap in 2026 Trends and How to Build a High Paying Career

The UK Gender Pay Gap in 2026 - What Job Seekers Need to Know

Finding the perfect job requires more than just an impressive CV and passing an automated screening. It also means finding an employer who values your worth and compensates you fairly. Unfortunately, recent data shows that the UK gender pay gap isn’t closing as quickly as many job seekers would hope.

Recent analysis of mandatory pay gap disclosures from 10,750 UK employers for the 2025/26 reporting year paints a frustrating picture for the modern career landscape. Nearly 8 in 10 employers still pay men more than women, and several major household brands report pay gaps exceeding 40%.

Whether you are optimizing your resume, utilizing an online ATS checker, or actively pursuing a new job search, understanding these statistics is vital for negotiating your next salary and choosing the right employer.

10 Key UK Gender Pay Gap Statistics

The data from the UK Government's Gender Pay Gap Service reveals that equality in the workplace is still a work in progress:

• The average median gender pay gap across all qualifying UK employers is 10.8%, meaning women earn roughly 89p for every £1 men earn.

• 77.6% of UK employers pay men more than women based on median hourly rates. Just 13.7% pay women more, and 8.7% report no gap at all.

• Education has the worst average gender pay gap of any industry at 21.4%, followed by Construction (20.3%) and Finance & Insurance (19.9%).

• The overall average gap narrowed slightly year-on-year, from 11.0% in 2024/25 to 10.8% in 2025/26 a reduction of just 0.2 percentage points.

• Women make up 54.1% of workers in the lowest-paid quartile across all employers, but only 41.3% of workers in the highest-paid quartile.

• Among the UK's largest employers (20,000+ staff), Lloyds Bank PLC has the widest gap at 37.8%.

• 94.6% of Finance & Insurance employers pay men more than women; the highest proportion of any industry.

• Construction firms have the lowest representation of women in the top pay quartiles, at just 14.5% on average.

• The worst single-employer gap among companies with 500+ employees is 83.0%, reported by James Montgomery Academy Trust in the education sector.

• Hospitality has the smallest average gap at 2.6%, though this partly reflects consistently low pay across both genders rather than genuine equity.

Gender Pay Gap by Industry – Full Rankings

The gap between the best and worst industries is stark. Education tops the list, with more than eight times the gap seen in Hospitality, and the reasons differ by sector.

In Education, the pattern is driven by a workforce in which women dominate lower-paid roles (teaching assistants, administrative staff), while men are disproportionately represented in higher-paid leadership positions. In Construction and Finance, the issue is more straightforward: women are simply underrepresented, particularly at senior levels.

Here is how every major UK industry ranks by average median hourly pay gap:

Year-on-year, most industries saw small improvements. Energy & Utilities improved the most, narrowing its gap by 1.8 percentage points. Mining & Quarrying moved in the wrong direction, widening by 2.0 percentage points.

The 20 UK Employers With the Biggest Gender Pay Gap

Among employers with 500 or more employees, these companies reported the widest median hourly pay gaps for the 2025/26 reporting year:

1. James Montgomery Academy Trust – 83.0% (Education)

2. Swift Employment Solutions Limited – 70.2% (Professional & Scientific Services)

3. Ryanair Ltd – 63.8% (Transport & Storage)

4. Forward as One Church of England Multi Academy Trust – 63.5% (Education)

5. Consortium Trust – 63.0% (Education)

6. Kirkland & Ellis International LLP – 62.3% (Professional & Scientific Services)

7. Cidari Education Limited – 60.3% (Education)

8. H.W. Martin (Traffic Management) Limited – 60.0% (Construction)

9. The Chelmsford Learning Partnership – 59.9% (Education)

10. The Diocese of Norwich Education and Academies Trust – 59.7% (Education)

11. Plymouth Cast – 59.6% (Education)

12. Bridge Academy Trust – 59.6% (Education)

13. Scholars' Education Trust – 59.1% (Education)

14. Penrose Learning Trust – 59.0% (Education)

15. Castleford Academy Trust – 58.7% (Education)

16. Mother Teresa Catholic Academy Trust – 58.0% (Education)

17. Osborne Co-operative Academy Trust – 57.7% (Education)

18. Saffron Academy Trust – 56.9% (Education)

19. Equals Trust – 56.3% (Education)

20. The Bishop Konstant Catholic Academy Trust – 56.2% (Education)

The dominance of academy trusts in this list is notable. 17 of the top 20 worst employers are education providers, but this doesn't mean schools are uniquely unfair. The gap is structural: academy trusts employ both well-paid senior leaders (disproportionately male) and large numbers of lower-paid support staff under a single employer.

Ryanair's 63.8% gap, worsening by 6.0 percentage points year-on-year, reflects a different dynamic. The airline attributes its gap to the gender imbalance in its pilot workforce, though female pilot applications have risen to 11% of total applications.

Finance & Insurance – Where the Gap Hits Hardest

Finance stands out because it combines a wide gap (19.9% average) with the highest proportion of employers favouring men (94.6%). In practical terms, if you're a woman working in UK financial services, the odds that your employer pays men more are overwhelming.

The worst offenders among firms with 500+ employees:

• E.Surv Limited – 55.9%

• Intelligent Processing Solutions Limited – 54.2%

• HSBC Bank PLC – 45.3%

• Investec Wealth & Investment Limited – 44.0%

• N.M. Rothschild & Sons Limited – 44.0%

• IQUW Administration Services Limited – 43.0%

• Schroder & Co. Limited – 42.7%

• Quilter Cheviot Limited – 42.0%

• NewDay Cards Ltd – 41.0%

• Premium Credit Limited – 41.0%

At HSBC Bank PLC, women make up just 17% of the highest-paid quartile but 55% of the lowest-paid quartile. That distribution alone explains most of the 45.3% median gap. Among the UK's mega-employers (20,000+ staff), finance dominates the worst positions: Lloyds Bank PLC (37.8%), Lloyds Banking Group PLC (35.0%), and NatWest (26.2%) all sit at the top.

Construction – Wide Gaps, Few Women

Construction has the second-worst average pay gap at 20.3%, and the lowest proportion of women in top-quartile roles of any sector; just 14.5%.

The worst construction employers with 500+ staff:

• H.W. Martin (Traffic Management) Limited – 60.0% (worsened by +17.0pp year-on-year)

• BAM Construct & Ventures UK Limited – 52.1%

• Winvic Construction Limited – 46.6%

• McLaren Construction Limited – 45.5%

• Saipem Limited – 43.2%

93.5% of construction employers pay men more than women. The gap here is less about unequal pay for identical roles and more about women's continued underrepresentation in higher-paid operational and leadership positions across the industry.

Household Names – How the UK's Biggest Employers Compare

The UK's 20,000+ employee organisations include some of the most recognisable brands in the country. Here's how they compare on median hourly pay gap:

The widest gaps among mega-employers:

• Lloyds Bank PLC – 37.8%

• Lloyds Banking Group PLC – 35.0%

• British Airways PLC – 31.0%

• NatWest – 26.2%

• Barclays Execution Services Limited – 18.9%

Mid-range:

• Network Rail Infrastructure Limited – 11.1%

• Next Retail Limited – 10.9%

• BT (British Telecommunications) – 9.4%

• University of Oxford – 9.4%

• Barclays Bank UK PLC – 9.2%

Smaller gaps:

• Sainsbury's Supermarkets Ltd – 6.7%

• John Lewis PLC – 5.8%

• Marks and Spencer P.L.C. – 5.5%

• Tesco Stores Limited – 4.8%

• Aldi Stores Limited – 4.5%

Near parity or reversed:

• Royal Mail Group Limited – 0.2%

• B&M Retail Limited – 0.0%

• Lidl Great Britain Limited – 0.0%

• Amazon UK Services Ltd – 0.3% (women paid slightly more)

• Jaguar Land Rover Limited – 3.2% (women paid more)

Retail and hospitality firms consistently cluster at the lower end. Flatter pay structures mean less room for a gap to emerge, but they also reflect that median pay in these sectors is lower overall.

13.7% of UK Employers Pay Women More Than Men

It isn't all one-directional. 1,324 of the 9,665 employers in our cleaned dataset report a negative pay gap, meaning women's median hourly pay exceeds men's.

These reversed gaps are most common in Health & Social Care (40.9% of employers show no gap or favour women) and Hospitality (47.3% of employers show no gap or favour women). They're rarest in Construction (6.5%), Finance & Insurance (5.4%), and Education (8.4%).

Year-on-Year Trends – Marginal Progress

The overall average median pay gap shrank from 11.0% in 2024/25 to 10.8% in 2025/26 a reduction of 0.2 percentage points. At this pace, it would take roughly 54 years to close the gap entirely.

Some individual employers made dramatic progress. Swissport GB Limited dropped from 77.3% to 2.6% a 74.7 percentage point improvement. The Coaching Inn Group went from 85.0% to 6.1%.

Others moved sharply in the wrong direction. Consortium Trust's gap widened from 15.4% to 63.0% (+47.6pp). H.W. Martin went from 43.0% to 60.0% (+17.0pp). Cidari Education jumped from 42.4% to 60.3% (+17.9pp). At the industry level, Mining & Quarrying saw the biggest deterioration (+2.0pp), while Energy & Utilities improved the most (-1.8pp).

How to Navigate Your Job Search

Knowing that wage disparities exist allows you to take total control of your professional trajectory. You can ensure you are getting the pay you deserve by following a few strategic steps:

1. Optimize Your Resume – To land high-paying roles in highly competitive sectors, your CV must stand out immediately. Use a professional resume builder to craft a clean, high-impact application that highlights your true market value.

2. Beat the Hiring Bots – Many of the best-paying companies use automated filters to screen applicants. Always run your document through an advanced ATS checker to ensure your formatting is flawless and rich with the exact keywords recruiters look for.

3. Negotiate with Confidence – Armed with industry data, you can confidently discuss salary expectations during the interview process. Never settle for less than the industry standard for your experience level.

Do not let macroeconomic gaps dictate your earning potential. By staying informed and utilizing cutting-edge tools at Job200.com, you can position yourself perfectly to bypass corporate hurdles, ace your next interview, and secure the fair compensation you deserve.

Methodology

We downloaded the full dataset from the UK Government's Gender Pay Gap Service for the 2025/26 and 2024/25 reporting years. The 2025/26 dataset contained 10,750 employer submissions (the reporting deadline is April 4, 2026, and the dataset is approximately 95% complete at the time of analysis).

To ensure reliable comparisons, we cleaned the data as follows:

• Removed employers reporting gaps of exactly +100% or -100% (typically data anomalies from single-gender pay bands).

• Excluded employers classified as "Less than 250" employees (these are not required to report and represent edge cases).

• Excluded employers without classifiable industry codes.

This left 9,665 employers for the 2025/26 analysis and 10,187 for the 2024/25 analysis. Industries were classified using UK Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) 2007 codes. Year-on-year changes were calculated by matching employers across both datasets using their unique Employer ID. Companies not present in both years show "N/A" for year-on-year change. The "Top 20 worst employers" and industry-specific rankings include only employers with 500+ employees to ensure statistical relevance and focus on companies with sufficient scale for the gap figures to be meaningful.

All data was gathered from the UK Government's Gender Pay Gap Service unless otherwise stated. Data accurate as of April 2026.