Women made up only a quarter of top earners last year despite almost equal representation in workforce

Just a quarter of Ireland’s top earners were women last year, despite gender representation in the overall workforce being “relatively equal”.

Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures on earnings for 2022 show that, across all employments active for at least 50 weeks last year, 51.3 per cent were men and 48.7 per cent were women.

However, among those with annual earnings in the top 1 per cent, three quarters (74.8 per cent) were men.

Male dominance was nearly as strong among the top 10 per cent of earners, at 70.3 per cent. And even among the top quarter of all earners, men still accounted for the majority – 61.8 per cent.

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While women have improved their position in the top 1 per cent of earners, up from 18.7 per cent to 25.2 per cent in the decade to 2022, the presence of women within the top 25 per cent of earners slipped over the same period to 38.2 per cent from 39.3 per cent.

Men represented the majority of workers in just eight of 13 economic sectors, the CSO noted, but made up at least 65 per cent of top 1 per cent earners in every category.

In education, where women represented 72.5 per cent of all employments, men accounted for 71 per cent of those in the top 1 per cent earnings bracket. The picture in human health and social work was the same: women accounted for 76.5 per cent of workers but occupied just 35 per cent of roles within the top 1 per cent of earnings.

[ Gender pay gap at the Central Bank falls to 3.9%, report shows ]

In general, the median annual income for men last year (€45,537) was 20.5 per cent higher than that for women (€37,782).

There was relatively equal gender representation in employments across all age groups, but mean and median average annual earnings tended to peak at an earlier age for women than for men.

Looking at earnings across different counties last year, Dublin had the highest mean (€60,804) and median (€46,136) annual earnings while the lowest mean (€39,156) and median (€33,523) were recorded in Donegal.

Dublin was the county with the most high earners by sector, as seven of 13 economic sectors saw highest median earnings in the capital. In terms of the highest-earning individual sector, median earnings in information and communication were the highest across 17 different counties.

Analysis of earnings was based on tax data from Revenue, as well as information from the Department of Social Protection and the CSO business register.

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