Childcare support could help female hospitality workers earn 'up to £3,500' more each year

17-Mar-2023 - Last updated on 17-Mar-2023 at 10:41 GMT

The childcare plan announced in the spring Budget earlier this week (15 March) may help to address the current earnings imbalance in the hospitality industry.

That’s according to analysis from shift work platform Deputy, which found that female workers in hospitality are currently rostered for an average of 19 hours fewer each month than their male counterparts.

According to Deputy’s data, if women in hospitality were to work the same hours as men across a 12-month period from April, they would earn up to £3,501 more a year.

Deputy gives different figures for different parts of the industry, with those working in hotels and accommodation and pubs and bars potentially in line for the biggest uplift (£3,501 and £3,251 respectively) and those working in cafes and coffee shops and fast food and takeaways likely to get the least (£1,500 and £2,751 respectively).

Restaurant workers sit in the middle with an uplift of £2,376. Deputy’s data was analysed by independent labour economist Shashi Karunanethy, who examined more than 2.3 million shifts and 17.3 million hours worked by 41,884 British hospitality workers.

Playing a waiting game

Under the Chancellor’s plans announced earlier this week, free childcare for working parents in England is being expanded to children aged nine months (currently the support kicks in at three years old).

But the move won’t really benefit people that have children under three at the moment because the scheme is being introduced in stages.

Working parents of two-year-olds will get 15 hours of free care from April 2024; children from nine months will get 15 hours free childcare from September 2024; and finally all eligible under-5s will get 30 hours free childcare from September 2025.

“Our snapshot of UK hospitality looks at current shift-equity trends across the industry, where men still continue to see a greater share in shifts and hours in comparison to women across the majority of hospitality subsectors,” says general manager for EMEA at Deputy David Kelly.

“The latest childcare support that has been announced this week is designed to support all working parents, but we know from various studies that it is often still working mothers who shoulder the majority of childcare responsibilities. We hope that these changes will be another small step towards fairness and equity for workers.”