According to preliminary data of Statistics Estonia, the country’s official statistics agency, in 2022, the gross hourly earnings of female employees were 17.7% smaller than the earnings of male employees; the gender pay gap increased by 2.8 percentage points year-on-year.
The largest gap between men’s and women’s earnings was recorded in financial and insurance activities (32.9%), followed by wholesale and retail trade (31.6%), other service activities (27.8%) and manufacturing (25.8%).
As in 2021, transportation and storage was the only economic activity where women earned more than men, with women’s gross hourly earnings exceeding men’s by 9.3%.
Liina Kuusik, an analyst at Statistics Estonia, said the gender pay gap in Estonia narrowed by 9.9 percentage points from 2013 to 2021, but widened by 2.8 percentage points in 2022.
“Compared with 2021, the pay gap last year decreased the most in construction and increased the most in other service activities,” she said in a statement.
The gender pay gap is calculated as the difference between the average gross hourly earnings of male and female employees, divided by the average gross hourly earnings of male employees, and is expressed as a percentage.
The average gross earnings, as used in the calculation of the gender pay gap, do not include irregular bonuses or premiums.
Statistics Estonia and Eurostat use different methodologies to calculate the gender pay gap. The gender pay gap published by Eurostat does not take into account the indicators of enterprises and institutions with fewer than 10 employees. Also excluded are the earnings of employees in agriculture, forestry and fishing, and in public administration and defence.
Estonia has one of the highest gender pay gaps in the EU.
