The gender pay gap narrowed slightly again between 2020 and 2021. That reports the Central Bureau of Statistics Friday. In 2021, men earned an average of 25.84 euros per hour and women 22.42 euros per hour: a difference of 13 percent.
Since 1995, the wage difference between men and women has narrowed by an average of half a percent per year. In 2020, women earned about 86.5 percent of what men received on their account, in 2021 this rose to about 87 percent.
According to the CBS, one of the reasons for the shrinking pay gap is that female employees are now more likely to be higher educated than their male colleagues. In the age groups up to 50 years, the women have completed a higher education, there are more highly educated women, the opposite applies to the over-50s.
The average annual wage of women is much lower than that of men. In 2021 this was a difference of 36 percent. This is mainly because women are more likely to work part-time: an average of 25 hours a week, while men usually work 33-hour weeks.
More men with high wages
In total, 1.3 million working Dutch people receive a “high” hourly wage (more than 32 euros per hour). Two-thirds of those employees are men. In jobs that earn less (less than 32 euros per hour), the hourly wages of men and women are almost equal.
In nearly 45 percent of jobs in the financial services sector, employees are paid high hourly wages. The difference between men and women is also greatest within this category: more than half of the men receive more than 32 euros per hour. Only 28 percent of their female colleagues also receive such a high amount.
The wages in care are striking. Because many women are nurses or work in hospitals, they are also strongly represented within the group of highly paid employees. Two out of three high-paid healthcare workers are women. Nevertheless, men in care are relatively more likely to have a high-paying job: almost a quarter of men in care receive a high hourly wage, compared to 8 percent of women.
The figures published by Statistics Netherlands on Friday have not (yet) been corrected. This means that matters that influence wages such as experience, position, age and education level are not included in the calculations.