Employment gender divide still dominates sectors and salaries

More than 70 per cent of applications for roles in education and office administration are from women. Photo / iStock

The gender divide in New Zealand is still dominating the employment market, according to Trade Me Job's latest data.

An analysis of job seeker applications across 65,00 roles advertised in April, May and June revealed significant gender splits in several sectors.

It found that male applications dominated the executive and general management sector and that women were more likely to apply for roles in the legal sector by a factor of two to one.

Trade Me Jobs spokesman Jeremy Wade said he was surprised by the imbalance for some sectors, despite expecting to see differences of traditional male or female dominance.

"We looked at all the applications from our members over the past three months and in sectors like engineering and IT, more than 80 per cent of the applications are from men," he said.

"Public sector roles and banking and finance were evenly split between male and female applicants while more than 70 per cent of applications for roles in education and office administration are from women."

Wade said diversity of "thought and experience" is an important part of creating a successful business and workplace culture.

"This isn't about playing the blame game, and no one person or industry is at fault here," he said.

"We're all responsible for ensuring we have workplace equality and diversity. We need to have this conversation and think about what we're doing that might be inhibiting people from getting into industries and roles where they can do great work."

Salaries by gender

The quarterly data also highlighted the relationship between gender and salary bands.

The proportion of men applying for roles was higher for every bracket above $40,000, while the proportion of women diminished as pay rates increased, Wade said.

"Women are much less likely to apply for a high-paying role, and we saw this peak for six-figure salary roles where the proportion of women applying is just 30 per cent," he said. "There's a close relationship between lower average pay rates and sectors that are typically female-dominated, such as education."

Salaries going strong

In this quarter, the average salary for jobs listed on Trade Me rose 1.1 per cent just over $60,000.

Almost every region saw an increase in average salaries, except for Wellington which was down 2.3 per cent and Bay of Plenty down 2 per cent.

Wellington City still hold the top spot for highest average salary at $72,958 - almost $1,500 higher than Auckland.

Applications by gender and pay band: