- Another factor is Maternity Leave. When choosing to set up a family, Women are the people who will have to take time off work to give birth. After giving birth they are much more likely to bring up the child while the man works to support the family. 6 months fully paid is the current rate of maternity leave however, there is plans in the pipeline to raise the maternity leave to 9 months, much to the criticism of the Tories, who believe it will result in a larger ‘gender gap’. Employers when given the choice between two identical candidates with the same experience and qualifications, one a woman and one a man, are going to tend to hire the candidate who is not going to have potentially 9 months off fully paid in the near future i.e. the man.
- The final factor is job satisfaction. Those jobs with less satisfaction tend to be in an unpleasant environment, require longer working hours, unrewarding to most people, demands financial risk, inconvenient and/or hazardous. Examples of these are prison officers, executives, taw accountants, commission based sales person, travelling sales person and police officers. None of the above occupations are stereotypically linked with females and indeed are male dominated labour markets. This indicates to me that women are more likely to look for job satisfaction than men. Perhaps this is why jobs such as child carers, teachers and creative occupations tend to be female dominated. Due to the high supply of workers for these high job satisfaction occupations, the wages will tend to be lower than that of a lower job satisfaction occupation.
The region in which a person works and lives is another major factor in determining how much an employee receives in income. The UK, despite being a relatively small country, has staggering regional differences in income. Using statistics from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) the following data can be used to get an idea of the distribution;
- The median annual earnings in the UK range from £29841 in London to just £20148 in Northern Ireland. A difference of £9693.
- In England alone annual earnings range from £29841 to £20346 in the North East.
- Hourly rates of the four home countries; England- £10.85 (Highest in London at £14.42 an hour, Lowest in North East at £9.58 ) , Scotland- £10.11, Wales- £9.64 and Northern Ireland- £9.55
The main reason why these regional differences occur is due to demand and supply. In London there is an extremely high demand for workers. Most of the UK companies’ headquarters and foreign offices based in the UK are in the City of London. The generated demand from these firms is massive for skilled and qualified workers who earn much more than low skilled workers, such as those working in retail for example. The lower skilled occupations, such as retail, also have to pay higher wages than they would have to if they were located outside of London, as people in London have much higher living costs than the rest of the UK. High living costs include high housing prices, rent, transport and other services.
Regions, whose inhabitants earn relatively low income, usually have very few large firms and hardly any MNC’s and TNC’s. This results in supply (i.e. the labour force) outweighing the demand from the regions firms. Thus leading to a high amount of people willing to work for lower wages, or otherwise face unemployment. Many of the regions, who now face low income rates, are that of mining pasts, when mining came to a halt the average income in the mining regions dropped dramatically, simply due to no work. Another factor which affects the income in regions is the size of the population living there. Rural community’s inhabitants in particularly farmers earn much less than people working in the UK’s major cities, whose populations are in the millions.
Choosing to employ people based on their ethnicity is illegal in the UK, made so by The Race Relations Act- “The Race Relations Act makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against an employee (either full or part-time) in Great Britain on the grounds of race, nationality or ethnic group.” But this does not mean that racial discrimination in the work place no longer exists.
The most likely group to be self employed are Pakistani’s. Three fifths of Pakistani’s work in the hotel and restaurant business, an industry renowned for one of the lowest rates of wages in the UK. This could be interpreted as meaning, ethnic groups are not being considered for higher paying, more important roles in businesses. However, one of the groups with the highest professional occupation numbers was that of Indian’s (17% of all professionals), well above White British (9%). So this means that while some ethnic groups do seem to receive much lower income than that of White British people, other groups receive just as much and perhaps even more.
Factors which may hinder a person from an ethnic minority group being employed over a White British person could be;
- Existing stereotype and prejudice may result in an ethnic minority not being employed. Although racial discrimination is illegal, it still exists.
- Cultural Knowledge. A job which may require the employee to have in-depth knowledge on British culture will tend to be given to a white British person.
- Communication Skills may be a disadvantage for people from ethnic minority groups, particularly jobs in customer services and jobs which require high telephone manners for example, a disadvantage to people from ethnic groups due to accents, which the employer may find undesirable.
Finally, a person’s income is also affected by their occupation. A person’s occupation sets their income mainly by supply and demand. The following table shows earnings by industry subgroups and is very useful in seeing what type of jobs are the highest paid and what type are the lowest, and whether or not these follow any patterns or trends;
Highest and lowest-paid industry subgroups; Great Britain; April 2002
SIC 92 Average code gross weekly pay (£)a
Highest paid
1 Software consultancy and supply 722 748.2
2 Other financial intermediation 652 732.7
3 Radio and television activities 922 673.6
4 Activities auxiliary to insurance and pension funding 672 659.7
5 Advertising 744 627.6
Lowest paid
1 Manufacture of other wearing apparel and accessories 182 279.2
2 Restaurants 553 286.7
3 Retail sale of food, beverages and tobacco in specialised stores 522 295.6
4 Hotels 551 301.6
5 Bars 554 303.6
activities 14 315.9
Source: New Earnings Survey
- The data suggests that those in the highest paid jobs are most probably degree educated and/or very highly skilled, with years of experience in their trade such as people working in advertising and in the computer software industry. Because to do the job employees must be so highly skilled, the supply of the people who could do the job is relatively small in comparison to the demand. Therefore high wages will have to be paid to attract potential employees.
- Those in the lowest paid jobs seem to be much less skilled, in work which requires minimum qualifications, skills and experience such as bar and retail work. Because all most anyone can do these jobs, the wages will be low as the supply of people who could do the work outweighs the demand for that particular job.
- Another factor which affects how much an occupation pays, is the employee’s marginal revenue productivity. The theory is that workers wages are paid the value of their marginal revenue product to the firm i.e. the change in total revenue for a firm as a result of selling the output produced by an extra worker. This could be used to explain why a software designer, who earns a lot of money for his/her company, is paid more than a bar worker, who earns much less for his/her employer.
In conclusion, the amount of income an employee receives is mainly down to their occupation which I believe is fair. I also find it fair that people who are living in certain areas, such as London, receive more income than other regions as their difference in wages have to make up for the huge differences in living costs. The UK government have tried their best to make these the only reasons why some are paid more than others, but there is still some inequality and discrimination in the work place which has not yet been removed, despite the various Acts brought in. In the near future I believe that these inequalities will eventually fade out, but today the UK is still very much in the transition of becoming a fair labour market, and so unfortunately gender and race discrimination will affect some potential employees for the time being at least.
