"We find that between 2007 and 2017 the total annual cost of pay penalties experienced by black, Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshi men and women would amount to £3.2 billion per year … That’s a staggering amount of lost pay across the economy to account for unexplained pay penalties facing Britain’s 1.9 million Black, Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshi employees," the report read.
The think tank noted that its figures illustrated the conversion of pay gaps into pay penalties, which mean that such factors as worker’s occupation, contract-type, industry, education and degree class were taken into account in calculations.
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For instance, black women graduates in the United Kingdom earned on average 1.56 pounds less than white women graduates, while pay the penalty for the underpaid group increased to 1.62 pounds once background factors were taken into account.
"After the successful steps taken to expose and tackle the gender pay gap in 2018, we now need greater accountability on the ethnic pay gap in 2019. The government can make this happen by requiring large firms to report their BAME pay gaps alongside the reporting they're already doing on gender. The results should give firms an extra incentive to tackle these issues," Kathleen Henehan, the research and policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation, said, as quoted in the statement.
In October, the UK National Health Service (NHS) pledged to remove the ethnicity pay gap and ensure that the share of BAME in its top management was not less than the NHS's overall average by 2028.