Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The hidden barriers, or ‘gender pay gap’, preventing women from earning equivalent incomes to men is well documented. Yet recent research has uncovered that, in Britain, there is also a comparable ‘class origin pay gap’ in higher professional and managerial occupations. So far this analysis has only been conducted at the national level and it is not known whether there are significant regional differences within the UK. This paper uses data from the 2014 Labour Force Survey to stage a more spatially-sensitive analysis that examines inter-regional differences in the class pay gap. We find that the ‘class ceiling’ is not at all evenly spatially distributed. Instead it is particularly marked in metropolitan work contexts and especially Inner London, where those in high-status occupations who are not from privileged backgrounds earn, on average, £10,000 less per year than those whose parents were in higher professional and managerial employment. Finally, we inspect the Capital further to reveal that the class pay gap is particularly marked within London’s large private sector firms. Challenging policy conceptions of London as the ‘engine room’ of social mobility, these findings suggest that class disadvantage within high-status occupations is particularly acute in the Capital. The findings also underline the value of investigating inter-regional differences in social mobility, and demonstrate how such analysis can unravel important and previously unrecognized spatial dimensions of class inequality.