Gender pay gap in U.S. hasn’t budged for two consecutive years
The average amount of money American women make compared with men has stalled since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study shows.
President Joe Biden marked Equal Pay Day last week by spotlighting new steps aimed at closing the gender pay gap for federal workers and contractors. And he urged private companies to do likewise.
After years of narrowing, the pay gap for women in the U.S., which accounts for average pay across industries and occupations, held steady at 82 cents for every dollar a man makes over the past two years, according to the Payscale’s 2022 State of the Gender Pay Gap report. The study marks how far into the year a woman must work to earn what her male counterpart did in the previous calendar year.
Widening shortfall
The 82-cent gap hasn’t budged since coming in at 81 cents in 2019, according to the Payscale findings, which are basically in line with data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The shortfall is wider for women of color, and particularly for Native and Hispanic women, who last year earned 71 cents and 78 cents compared with white men, respectively, the Payscale study showed. Black women and those who were Hawaiian or Pacific Islander earned 79 cents compared with white men.
The pay gap also widened the longer women took time away from work, such as to care for a family member or if they had relocated. These issues were compounded during the pandemic, when women were more likely to report exiting the workforce and caring for children than men. And while the Biden administration’s 2021 tax and spending bill touted solutions to many of the issues that hinder women’s participation in the workforce, it didn’t get through Congress, and many women are still piecing together child care.
On Tuesday, Biden signed an Equal Pay Day executive order that encourages — but does not order — the government to consider banning federal contractors from seeking information about job applicants’ prior salary history. The Labor Department also issued a directive aimed at strengthening federal contractors’ obligations to audit payrolls to help guard against pay disparities based on gender, race or ethnicity.
‘One-two punch’
A March 2022 report released by Arjuna and the shareholder-advocacy group Proxy Impact gave 24 of 57 major U.S. companies an “F” grade for their work across five categories, including racial and gender wage gaps.
The Payscale study found that women who are mothers or who are older see wider pay gaps. Female parents earned 74 cents to the dollar in 2021, while women aged 45 or older earned 73 cents.
The pandemic was a “a one-two punch for women and people of color who disproportionately suffered from the 2020 job losses,” said Natasha Lamb, a managing partner at Arjuna Capital.
When the group looked at pay for men and women in similar roles and with the same qualifications, the findings were not as bleak: Women overall earned 99 cents for every dollar a man made, though earnings for Black women came in at 98 cents for that measure.
Only Asian women outearned their White male counterparts in similar roles, but this too is an incomplete snapshot, the study warns. Some Asian minorities earn significantly less than others, and the overall perception that Asian people earn as much if not more than their white counterparts lends itself to the “model minority” myth that discounts anti-Asian racism.
Closing the gap
So what’s a woman to do, especially given that negotiating can backfire?
Experts say that sharing salary information and advocating for your peers can help close wage gaps across racial lines, for starters. A new law in New York City will soon mandate that companies have to disclose a minimum and maximum expected pay range in their job listings, the first major metropolitan city in the U.S. to enact such legislation. Colorado, Nevada, Connecticut, California, Washington, and Maryland have laws with some form of salary-range disclosure required.