UK women are losing out on approximately £140 billion a year in wages due to the gender pay gap, or £9,112 each, according to research compiled by the Young Women’s Trust.

On average, men working full-time earn £39,003 a year, compared to women’s average full-time wage of £29,891. This is because male employees tend to be paid more, reach higher positions and are more likely to work in higher-paid industries, the Young Women’s Trust states.

Collectively, the UK’s 15 million working women are missing out on £138 billion (£137,682,320,000) each year. The gap widens further when part-time work is taken into account.

The research coincides with a report released today by the Office of National Statistics, ‘Understanding the gender pay gap in the UK’.

The report showed that the gender pay gap for full-time workers is entirely in favour of men for all occupations; however, occupational crowding has an effect since those occupations with the smallest gender pay gap have almost equal employment shares between men and women.

Per the report, when looking at age groups, the gap for full-time workers remains small at younger ages; however, from age 40 onwards the gap widens reaching its peak between ages 50 to 59. Furthermore, men who have worked for over 20 years in the same organisation earn 20.8% more compared with those men who worked for no longer than one year; for women, pay is 17.5% higher.

ONS figures showed that holding all other factors constant, for 2017 women’s pay growth in respect of age was lower than men’s pay growth and also stopped growing at a younger age.

In 2017, men and women working full-time in the highest-paid occupation group (chief executives and senior officials) earned a median hourly pay of £48.53 and £36.54 respectively, men also had 72.8% of the full-time employment share in this particular occupation.