Latvia’s gender pay gap is smaller than Estonia’s (18.8%) but larger than Lithuania’s (10.0%) and is slightly above the European Union average, according to Eurostat data for 2024 published on February 27th.
For the EU economy as a whole, in 2024, women’s gross hourly earnings were on average 11.1% less than those of men, and 11.4% in the euro area, of which Latvia is a part.
Latvia’s unadjusted gender pay gap was 13.9%. It is worth noting that the gap has been narrowing fairly consistently in recent years. Back in 2020 it hit a peak at 23.3% and even as recently as 2023 it was at 16.4%.
Across EU countries, the gender pay gap varied by 19.6 percentage points, ranging from -0.8% in Luxembourg to 18.8% in Estonia. This means that, without correcting for differences in individual and job characteristics of employed men and women, Luxembourg is the only EU country where, on average, men earned less than women, in 2024.
However, pay gaps can also be analysed from the perspective of part-time or full-time employment (see image below). Information at this level of detail is not available for all EU countries, but Latvia does less well when full- and part-time work are separated out.
In 2024, the gender pay gap for part-time workers varied from -8.3% in Bulgaria to 23.8% in Slovenia. For full-time workers, pay gaps varied also widely across the EU countries in 2024, ranging from -8.1% in Belgium to 19.9% in Latvia – slightly higher even than Estonia.
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Also noteworthy is the fact that the gender pay gap is considerably wider in Latvia’s private sector (16.1%) than it is in the public sector (10.6%).
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