This publication is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release as it may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources.
In this section an analysis of employer top-up pay is presented. This gives an indication of sectors and enterprises which continued to provide any level of pay to their employees during Maternity Leave. There is also an analysis of total pay (employer top-up plus Maternity Benefit) which indicates the overall impact when comparing pay before Maternity Leave to pay received during Maternity Leave.
See Background Notes for details of the methodology used for pay comparisons.
In 2019 the proportion of Maternity Benefit recipients who did not receive any employer top-up pay during their leave period was 35.2%. This decreased steadily to 26.1% for those who started maternity in 2024.
Conversely, the proportion of Maternity Benefit recipients who received employer top-up pay that was at least 90% of their pre-maternity pay increased from 9.2% in 2019 to 13.7% in 2024, with a peak value of 16.3% in 2022.
This peak value appears to be largely related to a public sector agreement, implemented between October 2021 and October 2023. The deal approved six salary rises for public servants, three of which were implemented in 2022. Public servants who started Maternity Leave in 2022 would have seen their salary increase (above the standard annual increase) while on Maternity Leave. Furthermore, public sector workers were much more likely to have top-up pay included as part of their employment contract and the effect of this was particularly evident in the No pay from employer category, (Figure 3.3).
The overall impact on pay levels during Maternity Leave is shown in Figure 3.2, where total pay is presented in three categories between 2019 and 2024.
For Maternity Benefit starting in 2024, 59.5% of employees received a total pay that was approximately the same as their pre-maternity levels, up from 57.1% in 2023. 13.7% of those starting in 2024 received less than 50% of their pre-maternity pay, down from 15.1% in 2023.
Comparing employer top-up pay between public and private sector, private sector employees are less likely to receive top-up pay from their employer with 37.3% receiving no top-up pay in 2024 compared to 3.3% of public sector employees.
A large majority of public sector employees, 91.7% in 2024, received at least 50% of their pre-maternity pay, compared with 43.4% of private sector employees in the same year. Conversely, less than 4% of public sector employees received no employer top-up pay in 2024, compared with 37.3% of private sector employees.
The effect of the 2022 public sector agreement can be seen by the anomalous increase in public sector employees receiving more than 90% of their pre-maternity pay in 2022.
Looking at total pay by public or private sector, again there was a clear difference in pay received during Maternity Leave. In 2024 2.4% of public sector employees received less than 50% of pre-maternity pay, compared to 19.4% of private sector employees.
Throughout the reporting period over 80% of public sector employees consistently received full pay during Maternity Leave. The percentage of private sector employees receiving full pay grew from 40.4% in 2019, reaching 46.6% in 2024.
For employer top-up pay during Maternity Leave starting in 2024, the lowest proportion of employees who received no top-up were those working in Public Administration and Defence (O) at 3.4% of employees, compared to 76.2% of those working in Accommodation and Food Service Activities (I).
In the same year, employees in the Information & Communication (J) sector were most likely, at 21.7%, to receive employer top-up pay that was more than 90% of pre-maternity pay.
Considering total pay during Maternity Benefit in 2024, Public Administration & Defence (O) was the sector with the lowest share of employees that received less than 50% of pre-maternity pay, with this being the case for 2% of employees.
For the same year, employees working in Administrative and Support Service Activities (N) had the highest proportion of employees receiving less than 50% of their pre-maternity pay while on Maternity Benefit, at 27%.
Although Accommodation & Food Service Activities (I) was the sector with highest proportion who didn't receive any employer top-up pay (Figure 3.5 above), only 20.5% of those employed in this sector received less than 50% of pre-maternity pay when the Maternity Benefit payment is accounted for. This sector has the highest proportion of employees with low earnings, so the receipt of Maternity Benefit has a large impact on employees within the sector. See Background Notes for a breakdown of employees with low earnings by sector.
In 2024, the proportion of those receiving no employer top-up pay during Maternity Leave decreased with increasing enterprise size.
For those working in enterprises with 0 to 9 employees 64.1% did not receive any payment from their employer. For the same year, 9.8% of those working in enterprises with 250 or more employees did not receive any employer top-up pay during Maternity Leave.
For those starting Maternity Leave in 2024, employees in large enterprises were most likely to have received close to full pay during the leave period at 72.9%.
For the same year, employees working in enterprises with 10 to 49 employees were least likely to have received close to full pay during Maternity Leave at 32.2% and were most likely to receive less than 50% of their pre-maternity pay, at 29%.
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