Top 2 in EU comparison

Women earn 18% less gross per hour

The gender pay gap is highest in Latvia (19.0%), just behind Austria are the Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany, Estonia and Finland.

(Bild: stock.adobe.com)

Although the pay gap between women and men in the private sector has narrowed to 18.3% in Austria in recent years, Austria was the country with the second largest gender pay gap in the EU in 2023 after Latvia (19%). The EU average is twelve percent. 

The gender pay gap compares the average gross hourly earnings of women and men in the private sector. In Austria, this fell from 22.3 percent to 18.3 percent between 2013 and 2023. The EU average fell from 16% to 12% in the same period.

• The gender pay gap is highest in Latvia (19.0%), just behind Austria are the Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany, Estonia and Finland, each with figures of around 17% to 18%.
• At the other end, men and women earn practically the same in Luxembourg - here the pay gap is even slightly in favor of women (minus 0.9 percent).
• There are also small differences in Belgium (0.7 percent), Italy (2.2 percent) and Romania (3.8 percent).

Reasons for the high pay gap
According to Statistics Austria (based on data from 2022), around a third (6.4 percentage points) of the pay gap in Austria can be explained, with the rest remaining unexplained.

• Factors include the fact that women often work in lower-paid sectors and occupations.
• The extent of employment also plays a role: although differences in working hours are already taken into account by using hourly earnings , part-time work is also paid less per hour on average, which affects women more than men.
• In addition, women are employed in the company for a shorter period of time on average.
• Education, on the other hand, has no part to play in women's lower earnings - on the contrary: if this were the case, women would have to earn more than men.

Speaking of part-time work: the proportion of part-time employees in the workforce has increased in recent years. This applies to both men and women - for the former it has risen from 10.3 to 13.4 percent, for the latter from 45.6 to 50.6 percent.

Part-time work is the dominant form of employment, especially for women with children under the age of 15. For men with children under the age of 15, on the other hand, it was not only significantly lower at 7.7 percent - it was even lower than the part-time rate for men overall (13.4 percent).