Unadjusted gender pay gap in hourly earnings
- Eurostat dataset
- earn_gr_gpgr2
- Reference period
- 2024
- Unit of measure
- % of male gross hourly earnings
Key estimates
- EU aggregate (2024): 11.1 % of male gross hourly earnings.
- Highest value: Estonia at 18.8 % of male gross hourly earnings; lowest: Luxembourg at -0.80 % of male gross hourly earnings.
- Cross-country mean 10.8 % of male gross hourly earnings, standard deviation 5.18, coefficient of variation 48.0% across 30 reporting countries.
- Aggregate change 2013→2024: -27.1% on a constant panel of 29 countries.
How much less do European women earn per hour? Eurostat dataset earn_gr_gpgr2 reports unadjusted gender pay gap in hourly earnings for 30 reporting countries, with 2024 as the most recent period carrying broad coverage. The European aggregate stands at 11.1 % of male gross hourly earnings. The unadjusted gap measures the aggregate outcome, including occupational segregation, not discrimination alone.
The five highest values in 2024 are recorded by Estonia (18.8), Czechia (18.5), Austria (17.6), Hungary (16.9), Finland (16.3), all expressed in % of male gross hourly earnings. At the opposite end of the distribution sit Luxembourg (-0.80), Belgium (0.70), Romania (3.70), Poland (4.00), Malta (4.90). while the median country reports 11.5 % of male gross hourly earnings against a mean of 10.8 % of male gross hourly earnings.
Dispersion is wide: the standard deviation across countries is 5.18 % of male gross hourly earnings, giving a coefficient of variation of 48.0%. The mean sits below the median, which indicates that the distribution is pulled by the lower tail rather than being symmetric. Any European average quoted for this indicator therefore describes a synthetic country that few Member States resemble.
Between 2013 and 2024 the summed value across the 29 countries reporting in both periods moved by -27.1%. The largest relative increases are observed in Slovenia (+27.0%), Hungary (-8.2%), Switzerland (-9.1%); the largest decreases, or the smallest increases, in Luxembourg (-112.9%), Belgium (-90.7%), Spain (-59.0%). Because the panel is held constant, this change is not an artefact of countries entering or leaving the sample.
Lower values are the policy-preferred direction, so the top of the distribution identifies where the burden concentrates: bringing the highest observation down to the median would remove 7.30 % of male gross hourly earnings from the European total for that country alone. The estimates above are reproducible: the dataset identifier, filter dimensions and reference period are stated in the methodological note, and the series can be re-downloaded from the Eurostat dissemination API at any time.
Methodological note
Source: Eurostat, dataset earn_gr_gpgr2 ('Gender pay gap in unadjusted form by NACE Rev. 2 activity - structure of earnings survey methodology'), extracted from the Eurostat dissemination API (JSON-stat 2.0) on the dataset update of 2026-02-26. Filter dimensions: nace_r2=B-S_X_O; unit=PC. Unit of measure: % of male gross hourly earnings. Reference period: 2024. Geographic perimeter: national reporting units with two-character geo codes (30 countries with a non-missing observation); European and euro-area aggregates are excluded from the cross-country statistics and reported separately. Descriptive statistics (mean, median, population standard deviation, coefficient of variation) are computed unweighted over reporting countries. Change over time is computed on a constant panel: only countries with a non-missing observation in both the base and the reference period enter the calculation, which removes composition effects but may differ from the officially published aggregate. No imputation, seasonal adjustment or re-scaling has been applied beyond what Eurostat performs at source. Flagged provisional and estimated observations are retained as published.
Source data
The underlying series can be inspected and re-downloaded from the Eurostat data browser.