Gender wage gap narrows in Greater Boston

The gender wage gap in Greater Boston narrowed by 9 cents in the past two years, according to a new report by the Boston Women’s Workforce Council — shrinking for the first time since the council started studying payroll data in 2016. For every dollar men earn, women make 79 cents, up from 70 cents in 2021. “Doing that math, it was like, ‘Whoa,’ ” said Kim Borman, executive director of the council. “I did it six times to make sure.” The drop appears to be driven by an increase in women advancing into highly paid leadership roles, Borman noted, and by a 6 percent average salary increase for women overall, while men’s average salary declined. The math wasn’t as positive when it came to the racial wage gap, however. That pay divide increased by 3 cents since 2021, with employees of color earning 73 cents on the dollar compared with white workers. Black and Latina women fare the worst, making less than half what white men do. The pandemic likely played into the wage discrepancies, workplace analysts note. Federal funding enabled many women to continue working or take new jobs, and worker shortages in health care, which has a roughly 80 percent female workforce, led to strong wage increases for women. The ability to work remotely may also play into women’s abilities to take higher-paying jobs, while the new state law mandating paid family and medical leave is allowing greater flexibility to care for family members. Meanwhile, communities of color continue to feel the impact of COVID, with increased health problems and caregiving demands hurting the ability to work. This has likely compounded the divide created by the prevalence of people of color in lower-paid jobs and a lower share getting promoted into management.White and Asian women in the Boston area earned just over $100,000 a year on average at the 103 companies analyzed in the report, while women of other races earned between $58,000 and $79,000. Massachusetts has a number of laws dedicated to pay equity, but its 27-cent gender pay gap is the 22nd highest in the country, according to the National Partnership for Women & Families, which, unlike the BWWC report, includes part-time workers and relies on census data. — KATIE JOHNSTON