Latest Pay Gaps Report published

Blog series Knowledge Matters blog

For the past eight years the British Library has published its gender pay gap figures on an annual basis, benchmarking our progress in this area and, over time, gradually closing the median pay gap.

In 2023 we eliminated the gender pay gap and although this year’s figure shows a slight rise (to 1.84%), it remains close to our target of 0% and changes within this range can occur from year to year. We are very conscious that it will require continuing effort and vigilance to drive it down as much as possible: we continue to actively support gender equity and you can read about specific measures in this year’s report, in the section headed ‘Our commitment’ (p. 15).

Since 2024 we have also voluntarily published pay gap figures relating to ethnicity and disability. We will continue to publish these figures annually, with a commitment to eliminating these pay gaps by 2030, the end of our current Knowledge Matters (PDF, 2.8MB) strategy period.

Information about all of these pay gaps can be found in a single Pay Gaps Report (PDF, 1.1MB) which can be viewed online.

As publishing the ethnicity and disability pay gaps is currently voluntary, it is not straightforward to benchmark these either nationally or within our sector. However, the figures serve as a baseline for future progress, and in subsequent years we would hope to be able to chart progression over time for each of these figures (as we have with the gender pay gap).

In this year’s report the ethnicity pay gap figures show a median pay gap of 5.53% for Asian colleagues and 11.17% for Black colleagues, while the median pay gap for colleagues with disabilities was 10.66%.

Although each of these figures show a slight reduction on last year, they remain unacceptable and the Pay Gaps Report reiterates our commitment to eliminating these disparities. As in previous years, we are sharing action plans to reduce and eliminate all of our pay gaps (p. 15), and we hope to continue and accelerate the reductions that we are now seeing in the race and disability pay gaps.

We are investing in measures that support career and leadership development, and working to achieve the full range of measures contained in the Disability Confident standard and the Race At Work Charter. Through these sustained efforts, and by benchmarking the progress we make, we are confident that we will move the dial on making the Library a more fair, diverse and empowering place to work.