PHARMACISTS in the UK are experiencing significant variations in income based on the colour of their skin, according to figures from The Pharmaceutical Journal's 2019 salary and job satisfaction survey.
The data revealed that "pay between white and non-white pharmacists has widened by 0.3% over the past year.
The survey, conducted between 06 May 2019 and 10 Jun 2019, found "a statistically significant 15.8% median pay gap between non-locum pharmacists who identify as white and those who identify as non-white, which equates to a difference of 8,320 per year --- an increase from 2018's reported ethnicity pay gap of 15.5%."
A total of 1,814 Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) members were polled to find these data, which the report said, applied across all areas of practice.
Mohammed Hussain, senior clinical lead at NHS Digital, said, "Although the data is not perfect, it does reveal a greater truth that the pharmacy workforce continues to have structural inequality."
Hussain called upon the RPS and the NHS to commit to ongoing ethnic pay gap reporting for their organisations as well as for all employers, in line with gender pay gap reporting requirements, which require companies and organisations with more than 250 employees to report their gender pay gap each year.
When broken down by sector, the pay gap between white and non-white is least in primary care (1.2%) and greatest in industry (41% disparity).
The above article was sent to subscribers in Pharmacy Daily's issue from 30 Sep 19
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