That sound you heard on Tuesday morning, sweeping through Martin Place and up and down Collins Street? That was the noise generated by hundreds of thousands of computer mice being clicked in unison, as workers across the country dug into the data provided by the greatest official exercise in salary transparency in Australian history.

The scope of the data released by the federal Workplace Gender Equality Agency is breathtaking. The data, which covers 7800 individual employers and 1700 corporate groups, doesn’t just cover the median pay gap between male and female workers, as it did last year. This time around, WGEA has required employers to break their staff into four pay bands (upper, upper middle, lower middle and lower) and break out both how many women are in each cohort, and the average pay in each band.