Business

Black male graduates suffer biggest ethnic pay gap


Black male graduates in the UK earn almost £4 an hour less on average than their white peers, according to a new report, raising fresh concern about the pay gap experienced by ethnic minority British workers.

The Resolution Foundation estimated the ethnic pap gap — the difference between the earnings of the UK’s black, Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi workers, and that of white employees — had come to a total of £3.2bn a year over the past decade.

The think-tank’s report comes two weeks before the end of a government consultation about what statistics employers should be obliged to provide about the pay of different ethnic groups.

Prime minister Theresa May has proposed that large companies must report the pay gap between staff of different ethnicities. This would mirror a recent requirement on the gender pay gap.

Kathleen Henehan, analyst at the Resolution Foundation, said: “After the successful steps taken to expose and tackle the gender pay gap in 2018, we now need greater accountability on the ethnic pay gap in 2019.”

The think-tank’s research found that black male graduates experienced a pay gap of £3.90 an hour on average compared to white peers. Pakistani and Bangladeshi males who have not been to university encountered a pay gap of £1.91 an hour.

The Resolution Foundation said Britain’s black, Asian and other minority ethnic workers have long earned less on average than their white male counterparts, partly due to differences in people’s qualifications and the jobs they do.

The think-tank’s research sought to take account of these differences, to establish whether part of the ethnic pay gap was due to discrimination.

“We cannot be certain about what factors underlie these remaining [pay] differences — attributes not captured by the data may play a role — but the strong suggestion is that discrimination matters too,” said the report.

A review commissioned by the government into race in the workplace by Ruby McGregor-Smith, former chief executive of Mitie, the outsourcing company, found last year that “even when overt discrimination is not present, there remains a lingering bias within the system which continues to disadvantage certain groups”.

Under British law it is already an offence to pay people differently for the same work because of their race.

The Resolution Foundation’s analysis did not determine the pay gap encountered by some ethnic groups including mixed race and Chinese workers, because the data were “too small to derive meaningful results from”.



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