Accredited official statistics

Statistical bulletin - Civil Service Disability Pay Gap Statistics: 2025

Updated 29 October 2025

Statistical Enquiries: Toni Clarke

Press Enquiries: Alex Hunt

Next Publication: October 2026

Download Table F -  Disability Pay Gap Statistics 2025

1. Overview

This bulletin presents disability pay gap statistics on the UK Civil Service workforce, as at 31 March 2025. 

This is the first year that comprehensive disability pay gap statistics have been published on the Civil Service and will provide a robust benchmark against which future pay statistics can be compared.

Key Findings for 2025:

• Disabled civil servants’ earnings are lower than non-disabled civil servants. The median and mean disability earnings pay gaps are 8.0% and 7.5% respectively

• Disabled civil servants receive lower bonuses than non-disabled civil servants. The median and mean disability bonus pay gaps are 24.0% and 24.4% respectively.

• Disabled civil servants are more likely to receive a bonus (75.2%) compared to non-disabled civil servants (73.1%).

• Disabled civil servants are underrepresented in both the upper pay quartiles, and overrepresented in both the lower pay quartiles.

• Disability pay gap statistics vary widely by department. All departmental pay gap statistics are provided at Table F -  Disability Pay Gap Statistics 2025.

Statistical note:

These statistics use a ‘binary’ comparison to report and measure the disability pay gap. The pay gaps are calculated as the difference in pay between non-disabled civil servants and disabled civil servants as a percentage of non-disabled civil servants pay (for more details see Technical note for disability and ethnicity pay gap reporting.

These statistics use the Equality Act 2010 definition of ‘disability’ as the basis of identifying disabled employees. This ensures a consistent definition of ‘disability’ is used across equality-related measures (see notes section for more details). The disability status of civil servants in these statistics are self-reported and civil servants  are not required by law to disclose a disability for the purposes of disability pay gap reporting.

2. Disability earnings pay gaps for the Civil Service

• The median disability earnings pay gap for the Civil Service is 8.0% in 2025. This means the median hourly earnings of disabled civil servants is 8.0% lower than that of non-disabled civil servants.

• The mean disability earnings pay gap for the Civil Service is 7.5% in 2025. This means the mean hourly earnings of disabled civil servants is 7.5% lower than that of non-disabled civil servants.

Figure 2: Disability earnings pay gaps for the Civil Service, 2025 (see table F)

3. Disability bonus pay gaps for the Civil Service

• The median disability bonus pay gap for the Civil Service is 24.0% in 2025. This means the median bonus received by disabled civil servants is 24.0% lower than that of non-disabled civil servants.

• The mean disability bonus pay gap for the Civil Service is 24.4% in 2025. This means the mean bonus received by disabled civil servants is 24.4% lower than that of non-civil servants.

Figure 3: Disability bonus pay gaps, 2025 (see table F)

4. Proportion of Civil Servants receiving a bonus by disability status

A higher proportion of disabled civil servants received a bonus in 2025 than non-disabled civil servants (75.2% and 73.1% respectively).

Figure 4: Percentage of disabled and non-disabled civil servants receiving a bonus, 2025 (see table F)

5. Disability pay quartiles for the Civil Service

Statistical note on disability representation rate

Please note that the overall disability percentages presented in this section do not represent the overall headline representation rates for the Civil Service. This is because these pay gap statistics are aligned with pay gap reporting guidelines and include some civil servants that are not counted as ‘in post’ on the reference date in Civil Service Statistics. Additionally, Civil Service pay gap reporting does not include civil servants employed at Scottish Government and Welsh Government whereas these organisations civil servants are counted in Civil Service Statistics. Furthermore, the headline representation rates for disabled and non-disabled groups in Civil Service Statistics exclude unknown and undeclared civil servants from the denominator in the calculation.  Please refer to Civil Service Statistics 2025 for the latest headline information on representation rates for the overall Civil Service.

This section provides a breakdown of the Civil Service by disability and pay quartile.

In 2025, non-disabled civil servants accounted for 61.4% of the workforce included in these pay gap statistics with disabled civil servants accounting for 13.5%. The percentage of civil servants who actively chose not to declare their disability status (undeclared) is 5.2%, and 19.8% have an unknown disability status. 

Headline findings from pay gap quartiles show that:

• Disabled: Civil servants are underrepresented in both the upper pay quartiles (Upper 10.3%, Upper-Middle 12.4%) and overrepresented in both the lower pay quartiles (Lower 14.9%, Lower-Middle 16.2%).

• Non-disabled: Civil servants are underrepresented in the Lower pay quartile (57.4%) and overrepresented in each of the remaining pay quartiles (Upper 64.4%, Upper-Middle 61.6%, Lower-Middle 62.3%). 

• Undeclared: Civil servants who actively chose not to declare their disability status are overrepresented in both the upper pay quartiles (Upper 5.5%, Upper-Middle 5.6%) and underrepresented in both the lower pay quartiles (Lower 4.9%, Lower-Middle 5.1%).

• Unknown: Civil servants with an unknown disability status are overrepresented in the Lower pay quartile and (22.8%) and Upper-Middle pay quartile (20.4%) and underrepresented in the Upper pay quartile (19.7%) and Lower-Middle pay quartile (16.4%).

Figure 5: Percentage of disabled and non-disabled civil servants in each pay quartile (see table F)

6. Notes

How the output is created

The statistics in this release are derived from returns completed as part of the Annual Civil Service Employment Survey (ACSES) and covers all Civil Service organisations, including all major Departments. ACSES requests from organisations an individual-level record of all their Civil Service employees ‘in post’ as at the reference date, along with records for leavers and entrants from/to the Civil Service in the preceding 12 months. ACSES collects information via a standard MS Excel template that includes data fields on pay, contractual hours, grade and location. It also includes personal characteristics, such as age, sex, religion, and sexual orientation. The data collected are anonymous in that no employee names are requested. The data, however, is considered and handled as ‘personal data’ because in certain circumstances individuals may be identifiable. Where departmental figures are quoted these will include the main department and their executive agencies and crown non-departmental public bodies. For pay gap analysis, however, different aggregations may apply. Additionally, the Scottish Government and Welsh Government are not included in any of the pay gap statistics published from ACSES.

Pay gaps and equal pay

By law, employers must not pay an employee less, or give them terms and conditions that put them at a disadvantage, because of disability, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation or another ‘protected characteristic’.

A disability pay gap is a measure of the difference between ethnic groups’ average earnings across an organisation or the labour market as a whole over a period of time, regardless of role or seniority. It is not a comparison of disabled and non-disabled employees in like-for-like roles. Even if an employer has a fair pay and reward policy, and has equal pay, it could still have a pay gap.

Equal pay is covered by the Equality Act 2010. Read more about equal pay and the law on the Acas website.

The statistics presented in this bulletin describe the disability pay gaps for the Civil Service overall and for each organisation. It is, however, important to recognise that there are a number of reasons why an organisation may have a disability pay gap. For example, an employer may have a number of grades with equal numbers of employees in each, and at each grade, employees of different disability status doing equal work, or work of equal value, are paid the same. This means the employer has equal pay. However, if there are different proportions of disabled and non-disabled groups in higher (or lower) grades then average hourly pay will be impacted and the employer will have a pay gap, despite having equal pay.

Further information

The Civil Service Statistics data tables, the quality and methodology information document as well as the technical note for disability and ethnicity gap reporting are published on gov.uk.

Equality Act 2010

Under the Equality Act 2010, a person is disabled if they have a physical or a mental condition that has a substantial and long-term impact on their ability to do normal day to day activities. Under the Equality Act, certain medical conditions are deemed automatically to be disabilities. In these cases a person may be disabled even if they are currently able to carry out normal day-to-day activities. People with a progressive condition are protected as soon as they are diagnosed. For more information, please see the EHRC website. 

It is individual organisations as the employer who are responsible for collecting data on disability according to the Equality Act 2010 definition. Employees report disability themselves, and will not be required by law to identify or disclose disability to their employers as a result of introducing disability pay gap reporting. The disability information provided to Cabinet Office for these statistics are the ‘binary’ measure in alignment with the Equality Act 2010. 

7. About

Civil Service Statistics is an Accredited Official Statistics release describing the UK Civil Service workforce in terms of its size, demographic characteristics, salaries, working pattern, grade, and location. The data is drawn from the Annual Civil Service Employment Survey (ACSES).

The Civil Service helps the government of the day develop and implement its policies as effectively as possible. It provides services directly to the public, including paying benefits and pensions; running employment services; running prisons and issuing driving licences. Civil servants also work on policy development and implementation, including analysts, project managers, lawyers and economists.

Organisations that make up the Civil Service include central government departments, their agencies, and crown non-departmental public bodies.

These statistics count all home Civil Service employees, including those based in Northern Ireland and Overseas. Not included are the Northern Ireland Civil Service, other Crown servants and employees of the wider public sector, for example, employees of non-crown non-departmental public bodies and the National Health Service (NHS). 

Scottish Government and Welsh Government are not included in any of the pay gap reporting. 

Accredited Official Statistics

These accredited official statistics have been independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics. Accredited official statistics are called National Statistics in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.

Accreditation signifies their compliance with the authority’s Code of Practice for Statistics which broadly means these statistics are:

• managed impartially and objectively in the public interest

• meet identified user needs

• produced according to sound methods

• well explained and readily accessible

Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR).

OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.

These statistics were independently reviewed by the OSR in February 2022. See Compliance Check of Civil Service Statistics. Since this review by the OSR, we have continued to comply with the Code of Practice for Statistics.

Request for Feedback

If you would like to provide feedback on any aspect of this statistical release, please contact us.

1. Code of Practice for Official Statistics: ↩