THE gender pay gap increases with age and is at its widest for the over-50s, new research suggests.

An analysis of official data indicates that the median annual salary of women working full time in their 50s is 23 per cent less than for men in the same age group.

Women in their 60s are paid 25 per cent less, the report by Rest Less, which offers help and advice to over-50s, found.

The study indicates that the median annual salary of a woman in a full-time job this year was just under £28,000, compared with £33,923 for men.

But the gap is wider for those in their 60s: £26,230 for women and £34,325 for men, the report says.

Rest Less founder Stuart Lewis said: “Women in their 50s and 60s face the double discrimination of age bias combined with the widest gender pay gap of all ages, receiving a salary of £8,000 less per year than their male counterparts in full-time employment.

“While the state pension age has now been equalised at 66 for both sexes, decades of a gender pay gap and the resulting wide gulf in private-pension savings mean that the future retirement incomes of men and women remain far from equal.

“The fact that earnings peak in our 40s and decline as we head into our 50s and 60s has profound implications for all of us and our retirement-savings plans.

“We can no longer rely on bigger salaries in the years before we retire to fund our pensions and instead need to consider the most efficient ways to save for retirement from an early age.”