The North/South pay gap for IT professionals is narrowing, according to new analysis of data by Integro Accounting. The gender gap is closing too, albeit from recent historic highs.
Integro’s analysis looked at data from HMRC’s PAYE records of IT professionals nationwide to reach its conclusions.
It found that the pay gap between IT professionals in the North and South of England had narrowed to nine per cent by the end of 2022 – that is to say the average IT professional’s salary in the North was 91 per cent of the average salary in the South – compared to 13 per cent in 2019, the last year before the pandemic distorted figures with its combination of furloughs, closures, reduced hours and so on.
Integro concluded that the median annual pay for IT professionals in the North is currently £43,135, compared to £47,433 in the South. For the purposes of the research, the North of England includes the North East, North West and Yorks & Humber while the South comprises London, the South East and South West.
On the gender front, the median gender pay gap for IT Professionals is now 8.2 per cent – a slight rise from the 2019 figure of 7.6 per cent according. Despite the jump from the 2019 figure, Integro points out that the wind is nonetheless blowing in the right direction as the gender pay gap actually rose as high of 12.9 per cent during covid, in 2021, when its figures show that a disproportionate number of women were furloughed on 80 per cent of pay up to £2,500 per month – considerably lower than the median tech salary.
Integro now places the national median salary for male IT workers at £45,826 compared to £42,068 for women.
Christian Hickmott, MD of Integro Accounting, comments: “The gender pay gap in tech is shrinking again after having widened during the pandemic furlough years. It is widely acknowledged that flexible working is one of the most effective ways of closing the gender pay gap and the tech sector is putting itself at the vanguard of this trend.”
“The tech sector has historically had a stubbornly wide gender pay gap but is now leading the way in adopting flexible working and is successfully driving its gender pay gap below the national average.”
Hickmott also looks to the pandemic and resulting changes to working practices to partially explain the narrowing of the traditional North/South divide. He said: “Access to the London market and to the highest paying jobs has always been geographically constrained. With a growing proportion of tech roles no longer requiring attendance in the office five days a week it has become much easier for top talent to compete for the highest paying jobs nationally.”
He added: “There was an exodus of London-based workers out of the capital during the pandemic and while that trend has lost some steam, it hasn’t gone into reverse. This is vitally important as roles in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing tend to be clustered in London. With more tech employers willing to allow remote or hybrid working, the wealth created by these high value jobs should be more evenly distributed geographically.”
Hickmott also notes that the growth in the number of tech startups in the North of England has consistently surpassed the South in recent years. Northern cities such as Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle routinely feature in the UK top 10 for venture capital funding, salaries, and number of tech unicorns worth more than $1 billion.
The lower cost base of these cities has further helped them close the gap on London, and Hickmott predicts that the acceleration of remote working is likely to continue to erode the dominance of the capital for tech pay.
Integro Accounting is a specialist provider of tax and accountancy services to contractors, freelancers and the self-employed.
