Women earn less than men in 8 of the 10 most common jobs

Men earn more than women in eight out of the ten most common jobs in Dutch small and medium-sized enterprises. The wage gap ranges from 3.7 percent for administrative employees to 14.3 percent for warehouse workers. There was no change in the average wage gap in these ten positions in 2023 compared to 2022. On average, men earn 6 percent more, the MKB Kennisplatform reported in the run-up to International Women’s Day tomorrow.

The only two common positions where men don’t earn more than women are pedagogical employees, where women earn 6.2 percent more, and pharmacy assistants, where men and women earn the same.

The average salary in professions where predominantly men work is higher than in professions where mainly women work. The women in the top 10 “women’s professions” earn, on average, 8 percent more than the few men in those professions. In the top ten predominantly male professions, men earn, on average, 16 percent more.

The wage gap increases along with age, indicating that women’s careers suffer more than men’s when they become parents. Among young people up to age 27, the wage gap is 3.4 percent. It rises steadily to 24.7 percent in the age category 54 to 59 years. The researchers hoped that the expansion of parental leave would reduce that gap, but that is happening less quickly than they had hoped.

The researchers also looked at the wage gap per sector. Men earn drastically more than women in the various levels of business services (between 16.06 and 20.25 percent more), general industry (18.93%), and chain stores (16.21 percent). The sectors in which women earn more are temporary employment agencies (3.57 percent) and freight transport (1.95 percent).

Working with the Van Spaendonck Groep, MKB Nederland analyzed the anonymized payslips of 1.4 million employees in the ten most common professions - pedagogical employee, pharmacy assistant, service employee, administrative employee, sales employee, account manager, driver, production employee, warehouse worker, and mechanic. The results were corrected for age and experience, so these do not explain the wage gap.