2024 WGEA pay gap report shows most recruiters are improving

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Just over half of large Australian employers have improved their gender pay gap in the most recent reporting period, compared to the previous year.

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) revealed the pay gaps at nearly 8,000 employers this week. This is the second year the agency has publicly reported company-level salary information for employers with over 100 employees.

The WGEA data revealed that women earned, on average, $28,425 less than their male counterparts in the 12 months to March 2024.

The findings are based on the average total remuneration, including bonuses, overtime, and superannuation.

The national average gender pay gap of 21.8 per cent is an increase on last year’s figure of 21.7%, however, the remuneration of chief executives was added to the data for the first time.

If CEOs’ pay were excluded, the 2024 wage gap would be 21.1%, 0.6 percentage points lower than the 2023 result.

The Employment Placement and Recruitment Services (EPRS) class (sub-category), within which most recruitment agencies and staffing companies are classified, produced far better results than the national all-employer average.

The EPRS class average total remuneration pay gap was 6.1%, and the median total remuneration pay gap was 4.9%. The gender mix across all employees within the Employment Placement and Recruitment Services class was 53% men and 47% women.

Nationally, 5,347 employers, or 72.2%, have a gender pay gap that favours men; 21.3% have a neutral gender pay gap, which is defined as an average pay gap between +5% and – 5%, and 6.5% (474 employers) have a pay gap that favours women.

All industries had a pay gap in favour of men, but pay gaps were highest in male-dominated sectors such as construction (25.3%) and financial and insurance services (22.2%).

WGEA reported that the higher a company’s average remuneration, the more likely it was to have a male-skewed gender pay gap; 92% of all employers with an average remuneration of $150,000 or more have pay gaps favoring men.

The good news for the recruitment industry was the 2024 improvement in the median total remuneration pay gap of most agencies whose 2023 pay gap was most pronounced (I have only included those businesses in which the reporting entity was the same in both years).

The employee numbers, hence the pay gap data, reflect all persons paid a salary or hourly/daily rate by the entity in the reporting period, including internal employees and on-hire workers.

Reporting entity	Male employees*	Female employees*	Total employees	2023 pay gap	2024 pay gap
Whizdom Pty Ltd	161	59	220	58.8%	48.8%
Ethos Beach Chapman Australia Pty. Ltd.	119	108	227	51.8%	27.8%
Robert Walters Pty Ltd	585	639	1224	47.6%	40.8%
Davidson Group (Aus) Pty Ltd.	366	429	795	46.5%	48.1%
Fircroft Australia Pty Ltd	629	187	816	43.6%	45.3%
Kinetic Defence Services Pty Ltd	75	16	91	43.7%	40.9%
Global Medics Pty Ltd	62	84	146	36.9%	25.5%
RGF STAFFING APEJ Pty. Ltd.	270	518	788	34%	30.7%