Bar — Hourly pay of men and women in six sectors

The chart compares men''s and women''s average hourly pay across six sectors in Ostland in 2024.

Overall, men out-earned women in five of the six sectors, but the gap was strikingly uneven: it was widest in the two best-paid industries, finance and technology, almost vanished in education, and actually reversed in health, the one sector where women earned more.

The high-pay sectors show the largest gaps. In finance men averaged $41 an hour against $32 for women — a difference of nine dollars, or roughly 22 per cent — while technology paid men $44 and women $38. The pattern suggests that the higher a sector''s pay, the wider its gap.

At the other end, the differences shrink to almost nothing. Educators earned $26 and $25 respectively, and in health the order flipped: women averaged $30 against men''s $29. Retail and hospitality were the lowest-paid sectors for both sexes — $18 and $15 for men, $16 and $13 for women — with small two-dollar gaps. In short, Ostland''s pay gap is concentrated at the top of the labour market rather than spread evenly across it.