Hourly gender pay gap 8.4% in May 2025
The gender pay gap for hourly earnings was 8.4 per cent in May 2025, according to the latest detailed earnings data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
Sean Crick, ABS head of labour statistics, said: ‘This is a narrowing of 0.5 percentage points over two years from 8.9 per cent in May 2023.
‘Hourly earnings were $47.90 overall, with males earning an average of $50.20 and females $46.00.
‘Hourly pay is one of the indicators used by the ABS to measure the gender pay gap. Comparing hourly pay is useful as women are more likely to work part-time than men.’
The average weekly earnings for all employees were $1,611, with males earning an average of $1,871 and females $1,372 in May 2025.
More full-time employees were males (60 per cent) with higher average earnings ($2,241 a week) than full-time females ($1,966 a week).
More part-time employees were female (69 per cent) with higher average earnings ($882 a week) than part-time males ($853 a week).
Median weekly earnings for all employees were $1,436 in May 2025.
Managers had the highest median weekly earnings ($2,596) followed by Professionals ($1,979). Sales workers and Community and personal service workers had the lowest median weekly earnings of all occupations ($818 and $968 respectively).
‘Distributional data showed that someone earning more than $2,122 a week, was in the highest paid quarter of employees in May 2025. Someone earning less than $878 per week was in the lowest quarter for the same period,’ Mr Crick said.
Individual arrangements were the most common method of setting pay for all employees in May 2025 (38 per cent). The next most common method was collective agreements (35 per cent). Less than a quarter of employees were paid according to an award (23 per cent). A small proportion of employees were owner managers of incorporated enterprises (4 per cent) who set their own pay.
Media notes
- Hourly earnings are for non-managerial employees (that is, employees who do not have strategic management responsibilities).
- Earnings refer to cash earnings (inclusive of amounts salary sacrificed) and are gross amounts, that is, before tax and other items (e.g. salary sacrificed superannuation) are deducted.
- When discussing average earnings we are referring to the mean earnings. Mean earnings are usually higher than the median earnings as relatively small numbers of highly paid employees can skew the mean higher.
- All employees refer to every employee in scope for the survey. This covers both managerial (including owner managers of incorporated enterprises) and non-managerial employees.
- Managers, as coded by the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO) is separate to EEH managerial status. Although there is significant overlap between the two, the ANZSCO Managers major group and EEH managerial employees are not the same.
- This release informs some of the ABS’ measures of the gender pay gap. For more information see our Gender pay gap guide.
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