Gay men earn £10k more than national average

[afleitch]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/gayrights/story/0,,1692754,00.html

'The true power of the pink pound was revealed today with the publication of a survey of gay men and women's earnings suggesting they outstrip the straight salary by up to £10,000 a year.
Women have officially joined the pink pound economy and some of Britain's biggest companies are ploughing money into the gay market, researchers said. There are now an estimated £70bn pink pounds earned and spent in the UK every year.

Gay men in full-time jobs earn on average £34,200 a year, compared with the national average for men of £24,800. Lesbians earn £6,000 more than the national average for women, take two more holidays a year and spend £400 a month on credit cards, according to the survey of 1,118 readers of Diva and Gay Times by the marketing consultancy Out Now.'


Another tidbit:

'Last year's government figures, which put the number of gay people in the UK at more than 3 million - or 6% of the population.'

Seems about right, but how can they tell? They never asked me

I hope the full results of this poll are made avaliable. 10k seems a lot, so it makes me wonder what sort of jobs are undertaken and what qualifications are held.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

IIRC homosexuals are much less likely to work in manual occupations and much more likely to work in professional occupations than the rest of the population. I think less likely to work in managerial occupations. Not sure about secretarial stuff.
O/c while the average male wage might be £24,000 or so, the *normal* wage is significantly less.

[Michael Z]

What Al says about manual labour might well be true. A lot of gay people seem more attracted to creative industries, for instance virtually 10% of people working in the film industry are gay (the fact that most production- and post production are based in Soho probably helps). You certainly can't afford to be homophobic at my workplace. (Speaking of which, my boss is gay and I think he has a thing for me, which I'm all too happy to exploit - not going too far, obviously, just, you know, picking up some heavy C-format tapes and bending over really slowly just when he happens to be in the room, that kind of thing. Soon that pay rise shall be mine, nyuk nyuk nyuk).

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Or it could be that persons who are economically insecure are less likely to come out as gay.  Those who earn more are better positioned to deal with the perceived risks of coming out of the closet.