Women closing pay gap with men, report shows

Middle-class incomes increase but men’s wages stagnate.

This week, the Census Bureau reported some bright news: Middle-class incomes rose last year to the highest level ever recorded, a long-awaited sign of healing from the Great Recession.

Along gender lines, the numbers revealed a more complicated story. Women are closing the pay gap with men — the national disparity shrank by the largest amount since 2007.

But it’s not just because women are landing more raises. Men, it seems, are hitting a wall.

Since the downturn, female workers — who still make less money as a group than their male counterparts — have seen more income growth. However, that is true only for white and Asian women. Wages for Hispanic women flatlined, and pay for African-American women declined. Men, meanwhile, have dealt with more wage stagnation.

Last year, the female-to-male earnings ratio climbed to 80.5 percent, the highest ever, financier Steven Rattner pointed out on his website. That’s up from 80 percent in 2014 and 2015.

The typical woman earned $41,554 in 2016, while the average man took home $51,640. Neither sex experienced a statistically significant income jump from the previous year.

But between 2014 and 2015, median pay for men increased by only 1.5 percent while women saw a 2.7 percent increase, according to census data.

Last year’s family numbers, meanwhile, show a similar trend.

Married-couple households, per usual, had the highest median income ($87,057), a 1.6 percent increase from 2015, followed by single male breadwinners ($58,051), whose wages have held steady. Over the past two years, though, women-led households, which include single mothers, recorded a pay jump of 7.2 percent.

So, is something holding men back, specifically?

David Wessel, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, argued in a blog post that, adjusting for inflation,