Gender pay gap double in private vs public sector, report says. Why?

A new report found that men working in the private sector make almost 10 per cent more per hour than women on average, compared with five per cent in the public sector.

The gender pay gap for female employees in Canada’s private sector is double that in the public sector, which is doing a better job of narrowing the wage inequalities, according to a report published Wednesday.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) analyzed hourly pay rates in 2023 and to make a fair comparison adjusted these for different factors like age, education, occupation, industry, years on the job, full-time or part-time and province. Data from Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey was used for this report.

The report found that men make almost 10 per cent more per hour on average than women in the private sector. By comparison, the hourly gender pay gap in the public sector is five per cent.

The private sector is also lagging behind in narrowing the pay gap for immigrants, the report found. Immigrants who came to Canada more than 10 years ago are paid nearly eight per cent less in hourly wages than non-immigrants.

In the public sector, the immigration pay gap is smaller, with immigrants earning five per cent less than non-immigrants.

“What’s clear even in 2023 is that wage discrimination is alive and well in Canada, but that wage discrimination is a lot smaller in the public sector, even though it still exists,” said David Macdonald, senior economist with CCPA and the report author.

In the lower-middle income level specifically, the public sector has managed to completely eliminate “discriminatory” gender pay gaps, but wage parity is not seen across the entirety of the income spectrum, Macdonald said in an interview with Global News.

While the pay gap in Canada has been slowly narrowing over the years, overall, male employees continue to earn more than their female counterparts, according to Statistics Canada.