March 15 is Equal Pay Day. It’s the amount of time women had to work in 2022 to earn the same amount that men paid in 2021 alone.
Women working full time all year were he paid only 83 cents to the dollar compared to men, according to a new analysis by the National Women’s Law Center, which analyzed the latest data for 2020. But when comparing all women who worked in 2020 with all men who worked hours and weeks, women were usually paid only 73 cents per dollar.
This pay gap is even bigger for women of color. While white women typically earned $ 79 cents compared to white men, black women earned $ 64 cents compared to white men, while Latino and Native American women earned only 57 cents.
“It seems like it’s only 17 cents, but it really adds up, and so we’re talking about $ 10 thousand a year,” said Jasmine Tucker, research director at the National Women’s Law Center.
For Asian women, the gender pay gap for white men is $ 3,000 a year and $ 120,000 over a 40-year career. For white women, it’s almost $ 14,000 less in earnings a year and more than $ 555,000 in a 40-year career. For black women, it’s more than $ 24,000 a year and more than $ 976,000 in a 40-year career. For Native American women, that’s $ 27,000 less a year and more than $ 1 million over 40 years. And for Latin women, it means earning almost $ 29,000 less a year and more than $ 1.1 million less in 40 years.
The gap is also narrowing in almost all occupations. Women’s full-time incomes are lower than men’s in almost all 20 most common occupations for women and all 20 most common occupations for men, the Women’s Policy Research Institute found.
At the same time, the gap has remained relatively unchanged for the past three decades. From 1979 to 1994, it fell from 37.7% to 23%, found the Institute of Economic Policy. But it has not improved much since then, although women have made big gains in educational attainment, from being less likely to have a college or higher degree compared to men, to surpassing men in education. education. According to the Institute for Economic Policy, women with higher education earn less on average than men with undergraduate degrees.
And as women get older, their purchasing power decreases. This means that the gender pay gap is widening substantially for women 45 and older, according to Payscale research.
The impact of the pandemic
When the pandemic struck, both men and women lost their jobs, but women, who work disproportionately in customer-oriented service positions, were especially affected, including being responsible for caring for children when schools and the nurseries were closing.
Although the number of women working full-time has increased from 2020 to 2021, there are still 1.1 million fewer women in the labor force last month than in February 2020.
The latest figures may seem that the gender pay gap has narrowed by a penny or more depending on the group, but as the latest data is from 2020, it paints a false picture.
“All those millions of jobs, and especially the jobs of low-paid workers, were lost in 2020,” Tucker said. But the average income of both men and women increased in 2020, he said, “because the people who remained isolated from the pandemic in terms of job losses are usually the ones with the highest salaries.”
Tucker and other experts suggest that how more women go back to workespecially those with lower paid jobs who have been out of the workforce for longer, the wage gap could widen again.
“When you take time out of the workforce, it’s hard to get back to the same level you left behind, and because you’re out for so long you may be willing to accept a job that’s lower than when you left or with a salary. lower, and that will follow you, “Tucker said. “Therefore, putting measures in place to keep women tied to the workforce will help.”
Paving the way for more unions It could also help reduce the gender pay gap, as women in unions earn more than women who are not in it, Tucker said. In addition, employers can conduct paid audits and take a look at what they are paying employees for the same jobs with the same level of experience.
On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced additional actions to pay federal workers fairly, including a proposed regulation on pay history, as banning the use of prior pay information may help end the pay cycle. discriminatory payment. President Biden will also sign an executive order to consider limiting the use of salary information in federal contractors’ employment decisions.
The Biden administration has also promoted support for collective bargaining, leading steps to advance equal pay for federal agencies, as well as raising the minimum wage for federal contractors that would benefit women. President Biden has also called for policies such as paid family and medical leave affordable child care to keep women tied to the workforce, but efforts are stalled in Congress.
The wealth gap
The gender pay gap is just one of the factors contributing to a general wealth gap. And while the wealth gap is harder to decipher because of marriages and other factors, the wealth gap between single women and single men is clear.
Women pay higher interest rates on mortgages and are more likely to break their careers, such as free time to care for the family, making white women only 32 cents for every dollar of wealth they have. white man. Black and Latino women only have pennies on the dollar.
Another factor that contributes to the wealth gap is the lack of investment, which could cost women hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars over their lifetime, although they need to save more for retirement than men, because women live longer, and Social Security. benefits are based on lifetime income.
According to the Census Bureau, more than 50% of women aged 55 to 66 have no personal savings for retirement compared to almost 47% of men. For those with $ 100,000 or more in personal retirement, women are between 22% and 30% behind men.
Emily Green, director of private wealth at financial services firm Ellevest, said the male-dominated financial industry is simply “not for women,” so more women than men only have cash.
“Women are really better investors than men, which I don’t think people realize. When you really look at both retail and professional investors, like mutual fund managers, hedge fund managers, “Women tend to perform better, really because they don’t. They don’t react so much to the markets.”
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