Equality Act 2020 Effects on Incomes of Ethnic Minorities

To reduce inequalities in the workplace and protect people from discrimination, the government issued The Equality Act 2010 which states that discrimination or unfair treatment based on certain personal characteristics such as race, age, sex, and others is against the law in almost all cases

This report by Maryna Ramcharan from WMREDI looks at the Equality Act 2010 and how the incomes of ethnic minorities changed when the legislation came into force.

Key findings included:

- Women earned less than men by 21.2%, and people with a degree earned 18.09% more than people without a degree on average, given the same amount of education, ethnicity, gender and occupation.

- The net monthly income of an average person of an ethnic minority before the Equality Act 2010 was introduced (specifically, in 2009-2010) was 7.07% lower than the incomes of people of any other ethnicity.

- Graduate labour market statistics show that 66% of working-age graduates were in high-skilled employment, compared with 78.4% of postgraduates and 24.5% of non-graduates. The median salary for working-age graduates was £35,000 in 2020. This was £9,500 more than non-graduates (£25,500) but £7,000 less than postgraduates (£42,000).

The estimates of this analysis should be treated with caution as being accompanied by low accuracy and broad confidence intervals being caused by high variability of self-reported data.