About the statistics
The gender pay gap statistics quoted on this website are based on the ABS publication Average Weekly Earnings [Catalogue number 6302].
The gender pay gap figures are calculated from the adult weekly ordinary time earnings figures for males and females. Weekly ordinary time earnings refers to one week’s earnings of employees for the ABS’s reference period, attributable to award, standard or agreed hours of work. It is calculated before taxation and any other deductions have been made.
Included in ordinary time earnings are:
- award, workplace and enterprise bargaining payments, and other agreed base rates of pay,
over-award and over-agreed payments; - penalty payments, shift and other allowances;
- commissions and retainers, bonuses and similar payments related to the reference period;
payments under incentive or piecework; - payments under profit sharing schemes normally paid each pay period;
- payment for leave taken during the reference period;
- all workers’ compensation payments made through the payroll; and
- salary payments made to directors.
Excluded are:
- overtime payments;
- retrospective pay;
- pay in advance;
- leave loadings;
- severance; and
- termination and redundancy payments.
Calculating the gender pay gap
When calculating the gender pay gap, the amount of female weekly ordinary time earnings are first divided by the amount of male weekly ordinary time earnings. The formula below is used for calculating the gender pay gap:
Gender pay gap =
1 minus (female weekly ordinary time earnings / male weekly ordinary time earnings)
x 100
An example
If female earnings are $700 and male earnings are $1000 per week, the gender pay gap would be calculated as:
(1 – (700/1000)) x 100
= (1 – 0.7) x 100
= 0.3 x 100
= 30% gender pay gap