Labour Market Statistics for Scotland by Ethnicity, January to December 2021

Ethnicity Pay Gap

Data are only provided to 2019 for this measure. The accuracy of income weights are affected by an issue with the coding of occupations identified by ONS. ONS have advised earnings information should be used with caution for later years and we have chosen to omit the data until the issue is resolved.

The ethnicity pay gap is median hourly pay for minority ethnic employees subtracted from median hourly pay for white employees expressed as a percentage of median hourly pay for white employees.

The median hourly pay for the white employees has been steadily increasing since 2012 to £12.25 in 2019. Similarly, the median hourly pay for the minority ethnic employees has increased since 2012 to £10.99 in 2019. Despite being higher than in 2012, the median pay for the minority ethnic employees has seen years where median hourly pay has decreased. The median pay for white employees has increased in every year in the series.

Although there are fluctuations in the ethnicity pay gap, the gap has decreased from 11.3 per cent in 2012 to 10.3 per cent in 2019. This was a 1.0 percentage point decrease over the period since 2012 but 0.1 pp larger than in 2018.

Chart 6: Median hourly pay by ethnicity, Scotland, 2012 to 2019

Source: Annual Population Survey, January to December data, ONS