Men’s earnings have fallen since 1970s, census says

The gender pay gap has begun narrowing over the last four decades — and women’s earnings are now closer to men’s. But that is not only because women are doing better.

The trend is also in part because men are earning less. Earnings for men have fallen in the decade since the recession, and are even below levels for much of the 1970s and 1980s.

Men are still paid about $10,000 more on average than women, according to Census Bureau figures released on Wednesday, but the gender earnings gap has grown smaller.

From 1973 to 2017, men’s earnings fell by about $3,200, or about 5 percent, in numbers adjusted for inflation. Earnings for African-American men fell even more steeply than those of white men, according to experts.

“We’re talking about a 40-year period of people working full time who are not doing better than their fathers and grandfathers did, and are basically doing worse,” said Mark Rank, an inequality expert at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s a really striking pattern going on over a long period of time.”

Census data show that average earnings for men fell again in 2017, the first year of the Trump administration. They fell for this same group in four of the eight years of the Obama administration as well: 2011, 2013, 2014 and 2016.

Women still face enormous barriers in the labor market, including gender discrimination in hiring and pay, as well as sexual harassment. Women’s earnings are still only 81 percent that of men, essentially unchanged from last year, as inflation-adjusted earnings fell slightly for both genders, according to the census.

But women’s average earnings have crept upward slowly over the long and short run, in healthy signs of progress, while those of men have not. Since 2010, average earnings have fallen by about $2,000 for men. They have risen by about $500 for women over the same period.