On the go: Pension provision and employer contributions vary wildly across UK employment sectors, with the financial services at the top and agriculture, forestry and fishing propping up the bottom of the tables.
Profile Pensions, a pensions aggregator, crunched data from 2018 Office for National Statistics research to work out the pensions of average workers in these sectors.
Finance and insurance employers contributed an average £2,341, or 9.5 per cent, with education employers almost as a generous at £2,054 or 9.3 per cent.
At the bottom, the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector paid an average 2 per cent – around the auto-enrolment employers’ minimum contribution for that year – with accommodation and food services activities not far behind at 2.1 per cent. This sector’s average contribution was a paltry £481, even worse than the agriculture’s figure of £589.
The average employer contribution was 4.5 per cent, with the average UK salary at £29,009, producing an average yearly employer contribution of £1,305.41. The average pay of a financial worker was £30,404, while that of a human health and social worker was a lowly £22,227.
The research also highlighted the gender pay gap, with men receiving on average 4.6 per cent and women receiving 4.4 per cent. However, in education the average employer female contribution at 9.3 per cent topped the male contribution at 7.9 per cent.
More details of Profile Pensions’ findings can be found here.
