The UK branch of international children’s charity UNICEF has reported on the disparities in pay between its employees from different socioeconomic backgrounds for the first time as part of its newly published pay gap report.
To calculate its socioeconomic pay gap, UNICEF UK compared the average pay of those who identified as coming from a professional or “higher” socioeconomic background and those who identified as having an “intermediate” or working-class background.
With 59% of staff sharing their socioeconomic background, the charity found a 0.5% pay gap in favour of those from a professional or “higher” socioeconomic background.
Of those who shared their socioeconomic identity, a third were from an intermediate or working-class background.
Civil Society previously found that none of the largest 250 charities in the UK had reported on their class pay gap for 2022, with Teach First reporting its gap for the first time in 2023.
Other pay gaps narrow
Published this week, UNICEF UK’s report is based on data from 5 April 2025, when it employed 408 people, of which 365 were defined as relevant employees for the purpose of pay gap reporting.
UNICEF UK also reported changes in its other pay gaps – across gender, disability, LGBTQIA+ and ethnicity – across its workforce in 2025.
Its median gender pay gap was 0.6% in favour of women compared to 0.1% in favour of men a year earlier. The national median is 6.9%, while recent analysis from Civil Society showed that the median gender pay gap at large charities had narrowed to 6.3%.
The charity found that it continued to employ more women than men across all pay grades, which it said helped to remove the gap in average earnings between male and female employees.
Its ethnicity pay gap was 8.7% in favour of white employees, a decline on the year before.
However, the charity noted that it was “still larger than UNICEF UK would like, largely because of a lower representation of global majority colleagues in higher paid roles”.
Its disability pay gap reduced to 5.8%, down from 10.1% in 2024. The national disability pay gap as of 2023 is 12.7%.
Meanwhile, 2025 was the second year that UNICEF UK reported on its LGBTQIA+ pay gap, which it found was 10.3% in favour of heterosexual cisgender employees, down from 12.6% in 2024.
Philip Goodwin, chief executive at UNICEF UK, said: “We want to be as transparent as we can when it comes to pay gap reporting, and that’s why we analyse more than the standard minimum gender pay gap.
“We’re really pleased to see that pay gaps across all characteristics have reduced, but this definitely isn’t job done.”
