The hourly gender pay gap is wider for Australian managers than for professionals, labourers and other classes of workers.
Men in management roles were earning almost 20 per cent more than their female counterparts based on average earnings each hour charted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Sales workers had the narrowest hourly gender pay gap, at seven per cent.
The detailed earnings information from the bureau revealed some progress on the gender pay gap over the past two years, narrowing to 8.9 per cent in May 2023 from 9.7 per cent in May 2021.
But men were still earning more per hour than women in all eight major types of occupations.
ABS head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis said the task of measuring the gender pay gap was complicated and there was no single measure able to capture the full story.
Yet he said hourly earnings comparisons were more useful than weekly earnings measures as women were more likely to work part-time than men.
He said the prevalence of women in part-time roles partly explained the wider pay gap when considered on a weekly basis.
"The majority of full-time employees are men with higher average earnings - $2074 a week - than full-time women - $1815 a week," Mr Jarvis said.
Australian workers are also most likely to have their pay set via individual agreements - 39 per cent - followed by 34 per cent covered by a collective agreement.
A separate set of forward-looking data points pulled together by Westpac and the Melbourne Institute signal an economy on the improve within the next three to nine months.
The leading index, which includes indicators such as dwelling approvals and commodity prices, recorded a second positive six-month annualised growth rate in a row in December.
The recovery late in the year followed 15 months of below trend reads that suggest weaker-than-normal economic activity.
The Australian economy has been slowing as global challenges and a series of interest rate hikes aimed at high inflation keeps activity muted.
Yet Westpac senior economist Matthew Hassan said the December leading index reading was likely a sign of a stabilising economy rather than one at the start of an upturn.
"Much of the lift is coming from a recovery in commodity prices since mid-2023, a rally that may not last," he explained.
The economist said the nation's economic prospects were "mixed at best", despite the signs of improvement.
