Racial and gender pay gaps in city jobs: report

Men who work for the city receive a median salary that’s $21,600 higher than their female counterparts’, and white workers’ median salary is $27,800 higher than Blacks’, according to new findings issued Monday by the City Council.

The Council’s report, which analyzed 2018 pay data, also found that the median salary earned by whites is $22,000 more than the median earned by Hispanics.

Those salary figures cover all job designations. When comparing the pay among employees with the same Civil Service title, gender and ethnic disparities still exist, but are less stark. Women with the same jobs as men make 99.6% as much. Black employees with the same jobs as whites receive 98.6% as much, and Hispanics 98.9% of whites in the same jobs.

What that shows, the report found, is that whites and men are far more likely to hold higher-ranking, better-paying jobs in city government — a situation the report describes as “occupational segregation.”

This is borne out in disparities over which ethnic groups dominate where. For instance, while 57% of the FDNY is white, 53% of those working for the Human Resources Administration are Black. But based on the median salary, working for the FDNY is far more lucrative. The median salary there is $85,292. At HRA, the median is $48,417.

“Sadly, this report proves what we already speculated about pay disparities among city workers, but now we have concrete data to work with in identifying the main problems and appropriate recommendations,” Council Speaker Corey Johnson said. “We now must focus on solutions to eliminate barriers that keep women and people of color from having access to higher positions in city agencies.”

The Council’s report was prompted by a law the body passed three years ago that requires the city to provide the Council with pay data broken down by gender, race and ethnicity.

Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo, who co-sponsored that law, said the report shows “clear, acrossthe-board discrimination of occupations that have a predominantly Black and brown workforce.”

“It is also incredible to see and verify that the ‘glass ceiling’ of executive management exists for people of color across the entire city workforce,” she said.