Gender

This indicator was last updated in 2021. It is now archived and will no longer be updated. Explore London’s Poverty Profile to view our up to date indicators. If you have any questions, get in touch.

View all of our work related indicators here.

Looking at hours worked within London and the rest of England can give us a useful insight on our working patterns pre- and post-pandemic. Actual hours worked are heavily impacted by external factors, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas usual hours are not expected to change much over the years. 

Actual hours worked varied particularly between 2019 and 2020 for the bottom income quintiles within England. Within London, the decline in actual hours worked for the 2nd income quintile is most extreme between 2019 and 2020 - dropping from 36.8 to 25.6 hours per week. For almost all income quintiles, t…

Last updated: August 2024
Next estimated update: November 2024

What’s this?

This indicator shows the labour market activity of all adult Londoners, split by sex. We can use it to see how many men and women in London are employed or not working, and the reasons for not working.

What does it tell us?

There are over 338,000 more men in work in London than women. Men who live in London are also more likely to be self-employed than women – 14.1% compared to 8.1%. 

Women are significantly more likely to be economically inactive than men, with 39.2% of women not working compared to 29.2% of men. For some types of inactivity, women and men have very similar rates, including long-term sickness and temporary sickness. 

However, women were significantly more likely to not be working because they were looking after the home or family, with 7.7% of women – …

This indicator shows overall life expectancy at birth in each London borough.

Overall life expectancy is consistently higher for women than for men across all London boroughs (2020-2022). The highest life expectancy for women is in Kensington and Chelsea (86.3 years), and in Richmond upon Thames for men (82.4).

The lowest life expectancy for both men and women is in Barking and Dagenham - 76.3 years and 80.4 years respectively.

Healthy life expectancy

Healthy life expectancy is the number of years a person can expect to live in good health rather than with a disability or in poor health.

Although women have a higher life expectancy than men in every borough, in some boroughs men have a longer healthy life expectancy. For example, in Tower Hamlets a man can expect to live 65.3 years in good health, compared to 57.8 years for a woman.

Albeit rec…

Women have consistently been more likely to be in low-paid work than men. In 2023, 17.8% of female Londoners were in low-paid work, which was a slight reduction compared to 2022 (18.2%). By contrast 14.8% of male Londoners were in low-paid work, but this was an increase compared to 2022 (14%).

This gender gap in low-paid employment is driven by the number of women who are in part-time work. There is no significant difference in the proportion of men in full-time work who are in low-paid jobs (9.6%) and the proportion of women in full-time work (9.7%), but 50% of men in part-time work are low paid compared to 39.2% of women. Despite this, women overall are more likely to be paid below the London Living Wage.

What does this indicator show?

This indicator shows the total number of people seen sleeping rough in London, by year. This information comes from CHAIN, a database about people sleeping rough in London maintained by charity outreach workers. It contains a record for everyone known to staff and volunteers throughout the specified year.

Further down the page you’ll find the number of people sleeping rough in London by ethnicity and gender.

What does it tell us?

The number of people sleeping rough in London more than tripled between 2008/09 and 2020/21 from around 3,472 to 11,018. 2021/22 saw the number fall back somewhat to 8,329 but it has increased again reaching 11,993 in 2023/24.

The number of people seen sleeping rough in London increased in both 2019/20 and 2020/21, despite initiatives like “Everybody In” which aimed to ensure that peopl…

Last updated: May 2024
Next estimated update: May 2025

What does this indicator show?

This indicator shows the poverty rate in London (after housing costs) by demographics. A person is classed as being in poverty if they earn below 60% of the median income. You can find out more about how poverty is measured here.

For further breakdowns by demographics, explore poverty by ethnicity, poverty by age, poverty by family type and disability and poverty.

What does it tell us?

Poverty rates vary significantly across different demographic groups in London. The highest poverty rates are experienced by workless families (50%) and households comprised of single people with children (47%). Black and minority ethnic groups are far more likely to be in poverty (34%) than white people (17%), and single pensioners also see a higher than average poverty rate a…

Last updated: August 2024
Next estimated update: October 2024

What does this indicator show?

This indicator shows the proportion of Londoners that are unemployed, split by sex.

What does it tell us?

Women are slightly more likely to be unemployed than men in London. 5.8% of women in London were unemployed in June 2024, compared to 4.7% of men.

For both sexes, this is slightly higher than two years ago. The unemployment rate is also higher than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic - but lower than it was during its pandemic peak of 2021, and much lower than the peak during the financial crisis of around 10% (in 2011). 

The unemployment gap

Over the past three decades, the gender split has become more even overall. In 1993 the unemployment rate was more than 50% higher amongst men compared to women, but by the late 2000s the numbers were broadly si…

This indicator was last updated in 2023. It is now archived and will no longer be updated. Explore London’s Poverty Profile to view our up to date indicators. If you have any questions, get in touch.

Just over 5% of people in work in London are on temporary contracts. Temporary contracts are more prevalent amongst women in work than men: 30% more women than men were on a temporary contract in 2022 (Q2).

The proportion of workers on temporary contracts has remained relatively consistent over the past decade, fluctuating between just over 4.5% and just under 6% of all workers. In 2022 (Q2), 0.84% of women in work and 0.66% of men in work were on a temporary contract and reported that it was because they could not find a permanent job

Just under two-thirds (63%) of working-age women in London who were born in Bangladesh did not work in the year to March 2021/22, the highest rate of any nationality. Pakistani women are not far behind with 61% not working. Of men in London who were born overseas, those from China have the highest rate of worklessness (28%).

Women originally from Portugal had the lowest rates of worklessness (2%), while those from Sri Lanka had the lowest rate for men (9%). For most countries, the worklessness rate is higher for women than men, although this trend does not hold true for countries such as Lithuania, Portugal, France, Romania, Poland and Italy.