Āputa utu Pay gaps

The gender pay gap in the Public Service has continued to decrease. As at 30 June 2024, the average salary was $105,800 for men and $99,300 for women, up 4.0% for men since 30 June 2023 and up 5.1% for women. This means the gender pay gap decreased by 1.0 percentage point to 6.1%.

GPG by occupation and age group(XLSX, 59 KB)

Contributing to the decline in the gender pay gap is the record high female share of senior leaders, at 56.7%, and the high increase in average salary in the female dominated Social, Health and Education Workers occupation group.

Analysis of the Workforce Data has generated the following insights:

• Pay gaps in general are lower when people in equivalent roles are being compared. For this reason, gender pay gaps tend to be lower for specific occupations than the overall gap. For example, the gender pay gap for senior leaders is 5.6% for 2024. This is lower than for all management roles (5.9%) and the Public Service as a whole (6.1%).
• Age groups under 40 years have gender pay gaps of 5% or under. Gender pay gaps increase with age, starting from around zero for those aged 25 to 29 and rising to 11.7% for those aged 55 to 59.
• Gender pay gaps vary greatly among departments, ranging from 24.3% in the Ministry of Defence to -7.6% at the Ministry for Ethnic Communities (a negative gender pay gap means the average salary for women is higher than the average salary for men).
• Differences in the gender pay gap across departments are affected by the extent to which departments have gender imbalances in their workforces, and this is influenced a lot by whether they operate in traditionally male or female dominated sectors. Occupations that are traditionally male dominated tend to be more highly valued than are occupations that are traditionally female dominated, and this influences salaries. For example, some traditionally male fields (such as IT or procurement) tend to be highly paid, whereas lower paid clerical and contact centre roles tend to be female dominated. This occupational segregation — women being more likely to be working in lower-paid occupations — is a key driver of the gender pay gap for many departments.
• There can be compositional differences between the genders in terms of seniority and experience within occupational groups as well, although there is evidence that these gaps are reducing. For example, women made up 59% of policy roles at the advisor level in the Public Service in 2014, versus 40% of principal advisor positions. This gap has narrowed substantially by 2024, with women making up 60% of roles at advisor level and 57% at principal advisor level.

The Commission has reported the Public Service gender pay gap using average (mean) pay since 2000. This differs to Stats NZ’s approach of using median pay when reporting the gender pay gap for the entire workforce. 

Measuring the gender pay gap — Stats NZ

Median pay is the middle amount of pay earned — half of employees earn less, and half earn more. Median pay better reflects the pay a typical employee receives, which is one of the reasons Stats NZ uses median pay in its reporting across the workforce.

On the other hand, mean pay better captures the effects of employees with very low or very high pay. This is important in calculating gender pay gaps because women are overrepresented in the low paid groups and underrepresented in high paid groups. The Public Service gender pay gap using mean pay is shown in the preceding section.

In 2024, the Public Service gender pay gap using median pay was 4.3%. This down from 5.8% in 2023 and is the lowest figure since measurement began in 2000.

The gender pay gap using median pay for the entire New Zealand workforce, as reported by Stats NZ, was 8.2% in 2024, down from the 8.6% reported for 2023. The graph below shows:

• How the gender pay gap measured using median salaries has generally declined over time for both Public Service (down from 16.7% in 2000) and the overall New Zealand workforce (down from 14.0% in 2000).
• The gender pay gap for the overall New Zealand workforce declined at a slower rate than for the Public Service.
• The Public Service gender pay gap is substantially below the New Zealand workforce gender pay gap.

GPG in NZ(XLSX, 10 KB)

GPG in PS and NZ(XLSX, 11 KB)

Note that the Public Service gender pay gap using median pay is more volatile over time than that using mean pay. The structured nature of pay for many parts of the Public Service workforce, with large numbers of employees receiving the same pay, are driving this volatility in gender pay gaps using median pay.

The graph below shows that in the Public Service men are paid more on average than women in each ethnic group, and Europeans are paid more on average than other ethnicities. This reflects the way that gender and ethnic bias compounds for Māori, Pacific and ethnic women.  Pacific women and men have the lowest average salaries in the Public Service. Overall, the largest percent increases this year went to European women, and Māori women and men.

Ethnic Pay gaps(XLSX, 10 KB)

Ethnic pay gaps

The Māori pay gap (the difference between average pay for Māori and non-Māori employees) has fallen from 5.4% in 2023 to 4.8% in 2024. The Māori pay gap is the lowest since measurement began in 2000. The Pacific pay gap has increased from the record low of 16.6% in 2023 to 17.2% in 2024. The Asian pay gap has risen, from 13.0% in 2023 to 13.8% in 2024, the highest it has been since measurement began.  Asian representation in the Public Service has been growing strongly in recent years and this means an increasing number, and proportion, of new recruits are Asian than in the past. This is likely to be counteracting improvements in pay gaps.

Ethnic pay gaps trends(XLSX, 10 KB)

Alongside the impact of bias and discrimination has on pay gaps, both gender and, ethnic pay gaps can reflect occupational segregation or the occupation profile of a particular ethnic group. Māori, Pacific and Asian public servants are over-represented, to varying degrees, in lower-paid occupation groups.

Pay for disabled public servants

The Public Service Census 2025 found that public servants who identified as disabled had an average (mean) full-time equivalent annual salary of $103,400 compared to $107,800 for non-disabled public servants. This represents a pay gap of 4.1%. [1]

Whaikaha calculated that the overall New Zealand disability pay gap was 7.6% in the June 2024 quarter using data from Stats NZ’s Household Labour Force Survey. This pay gap was calculated using median earnings, rather than mean earnings. The disability pay gap using median salaries from the 2025 Public Service Census was 4.4% (the disabled median salary was $92,200 compared to $96,500 for non-disabled public servants).

Labour market statistics for disabled people June 2024 quarter – Whaikaha.govt.nz

The pay gaps were larger for those with mental health conditions (11.6% using mean salaries, 12.7% using median salaries) and neurodivergent conditions (8.6% using mean salaries, 8.8% using median salaries).

In the Public Service, people who identified as disabled, or had mental health or neurodivergent conditions were less likely to be managers, and this will be contributing to their pay gaps. In addition, those with mental health or neurodivergent conditions tend to be younger than other public servants and this will be contributing to their pay gaps.

More information on disabled public servants can be found on our Disability demographics page.

Demographics – Disability

The Public Service Census 2025 found that rainbow public servants were paid somewhat less than non-rainbow public servants, $101,200 on average (mean), compared to $108,200, giving a pay gap of 6.5%.[1]

However, age is a significant driver in this lower pay, with rainbow public servants tending to be notably younger than their non-rainbow colleagues - this is similar to what is seen in New Zealand’s LGBTIQ+ population overall (Stats NZ). When salary is viewed by age group, only the youngest group (under 25 years) of rainbow employees were paid slightly (2.7%) lower than their non-rainbow colleagues. For all other age groups, the average salary is actually higher for the rainbow public servants, with this gap increasing with age.

Within the rainbow umbrella, there was a fairly similar picture for public servants of another and/or multiple genders, with a pay gap of 12.6% compared to male and female colleagues (based on average pay of $93,900 compared to $107,400). Again, those with another and/or multiple genders are younger on average than their colleagues and when age is taken into account, the pay gaps reduce or reverse (for example, 25 to 34 years is the most common age group for another and/or multiple genders, where the pay gap is a much smaller 3.3%).

More information on rainbow communities can be found on our Rainbow demographics page.

Demographics – Rainbow

[1] The response rate for the 2025 Public Service Census was 68%, representing the views and experiences of over 44,000 public servants. More information is available from the Public Service Census webpage.