I’ll be first to admit that being my friend is not always easy. It’s still highly rewarding, I would argue, but to enter into a meaningful friendship with me is to open oneself to a barrage of intimate questioning.
As testament to their very fine characters, most of my friends have unflinchingly provided their ballpark figures. In return, they score my honest advice about either negotiating a pay rise, getting a low-interest mortgage or building their nest egg. As I say, a rewarding exchange. Employers have long pushed back against pay transparency attempts, arguing it will lead to higher workplace conflict and reduced output from employees found to be paid below-average salaries. Indeed,conducted in Norway, where every taxpayer had their annual income made public online in 2001, found such disclosures increased the gap in happiness between richer and poorer individuals by 29 per cent, while also increasing the gap in life satisfaction by 21 per cent.
gender pay gap in the public sector is also considerably smaller at 12 per cent, compared to the private sector gap of 17 per cent.