Gender Wage Gap Worsens for Second Year in a Row

Key Findings

• In 2024, women working full-time year-round made 80.9 cents per dollar earned by men (a wage gap of 19.1 percent)—a significant worsening of the gender earnings ratio compared to 82.7 cents per dollar in 2023 (a wage gap of 17.3 percent). This is the biggest annual drop in the gender earnings ratio since 1966, and the worst ratio since 2016.
• The gender wage gap for all workers with earnings (including full-time, part-time, full-year, and part-year workers) improved slightly, but the change is not statistically significant. In 2024, a typical woman was paid 75.6 cents per dollar paid to a man (a wage gap of 24.4 percent) compared to 74.8 cents on the dollar in 2023 (a wage gap of 25.2 percent).
• Against the backdrop of a strong economy in 2024, men’s typical earnings increased significantly but women’s earnings were largely unchanged. Adjusted for inflation, the earnings of a typical full-time year-round working woman did not increase significantly (just 1.5 percent) in 2024 compared to a statistically significant annual increase of 3.7 percent for a typical man.¹ 
• Racial and gender wage gaps remain profound. In 2024, a typical Latina earned $33,620 less for working full-time year-round than a typical White² man (being paid just 58.0 cents per dollar paid to White men). A Black woman working full-time year-round earned $28,340 less (64.6 cents per dollar), a White woman $18,500 less (76.9 cents per dollar), and an Asian³ woman earned $3,240 less (96.0 cents per dollar). Gender racial wage gaps compared to White men’s earnings in 2024 for full-time year-round workers widened for White and Black women, stayed largely unchanged for Latina women, and slightly improved for Asian women. 
• If progress continues at the same rate as it has for the last two decades, it will take until 2088 for all women workers to reach pay equity with men. Pay equity between all full-time year-round workers will take over 45 years, until 2071. Lack of progress in narrowing wage gaps means that projected pay equity is even further away for women of color.⁴ Policy changes are needed to ensure that women and their families see equity in their lifetimes.

Gender Earnings Ratios Worsened in 2024, as Men Saw Stronger Earnings Growth than Women

Both women and men working full-time year-round saw increases in their real (inflation-adjusted) earnings in 2024, but the 1.5 percent growth for women was not statistically significant, while men’s 3.7 percent growth was. As a result, the gender earnings ratio for annual earnings of full-time year-round workers declined significantly between 2024 and 2023 (80.9 and 82.7 percent, respectively; see Figure 1 and Table 3). This is the second consecutive year the gender earnings ratio has declined significantly, the worst earnings ratio since 2016, and the largest annual widening of the wage gap since 1966.⁵

In tight labor markets, such as in 2023 and 2024, the wage gap often worsens because men are more likely than women to work in jobs with high overtime pay and find it easier to negotiate larger pay increases, leading to their earnings growing faster than women’s. At the same time, the full recovery of the economy to pre-COVID-19 levels also meant the return of many lower-paid service sector jobs that are mainly held by women.⁶

When looking at all workers with earnings (including full-time, part-time, year-round, and part-year workers), the typical annual real (inflation-adjusted) earnings for women were 5.0 percent higher in 2024 than in 2023, while the typical earnings of a man were 3.9 percent higher in 2024 than in 2023. As a result, the gender earnings ratio for all workers with earnings improved slightly, going from 74.8 percent (a gender wage gap of 25.2 percent) in 2023 to 75.6 percent (a gender wage gap of 24.4 percent) in 2024 (Figure 1 and Table 3).

Annual changes in the real earnings of women (compared to men) highlight many evolving challenges faced by women in the labor force. The stalling of the gender wage gap reflects gender, racial, and ethnic differences in access to and demand for employment in different industries and occupations,⁷ unequal barriers to career progression,⁸ and retirement savings.⁹

In addition, the gender wage gap also reveals the many difficulties women face in fully participating in the labor market, largely due to disproportionate responsibilities for unpaid family care work and insufficient work-family supports.¹⁰ Women comprised 43.9 percent of all full-time workers in 2024 (compared to 43.6 percent in 2023) and 47.4 percent of all workers with earnings (compared to 47.3 percent in 2023).¹¹ Full-time year-round employment is also more difficult to find in female-dominated jobs, such as those in the care, retail, leisure, and hospitality sectors.¹²

Progress in closing the gender wage gap has stagnated in recent decades (Figure 1). By projecting changes in the gender earnings ratio during the last two decades (from 2000 to 2024) forward, we find that it will be more than four decades—until 2071—before full-time year-round women workers reach pay equity with men. It will take even longer—until 2088—to reach pay equity between all workers with earnings.¹³

Women Across Racial and Ethnic Groups Earned Less than White Men

Latina and Black women had substantially lower median annual earnings than White and Asian women and men in all the largest racial and ethnic groups in 2024 (Tables 1 and 2).

In 2024, the median earnings for a year of full-time work for Latina women were $46,380, leaving an adult with two children near poverty.¹⁴ Latina women’s earnings were just 58.0 percent of the median annual earnings for White men working full-time year-round, resulting in $33,620 less in a single year for the typical Latina woman.¹⁵ For Black women, the full-time year-round gender earnings ratio compared to White men was 64.6 percent ($28,340 less), for White women 76.9 percent ($18,500 less), and for Asian¹⁶ women 96.0 percent ($3,240 less). Gender racial earnings ratios for full-time year-round workers worsened in 2024 for Black and White women, stayed largely unchanged for Latinas, and improved for Asian women (Table 1).

Gender racial wage gaps are larger for all workers with earnings than for full-time year-round workers, irrespective of race and ethnicity. In 2024, when compared to White men’s earnings, the gender racial earnings ratio improved for Latinas by 2.8 percentage points (to 54.1 percent) and for Asian¹⁷ women by 2.2 percentage points (to 72.7 percent), but worsened for Black women by 1.6 percentage points (to 62.8 percent) and for White women by 0.5 percentage points (to 72.7 percent).¹⁸ Benefits of the strong economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic have been distributed unequally.

Women Across Racial and Ethnic Groups Earn Less than Male Counterparts

Latino and Black men earn far less than White men, and as a result, the gender gap is wider when comparing the earnings of Latina and Black women to those of White men, rather than to the earnings of Latino or Black men. Yet, within each race or ethnic group, men have higher earnings for full-time year-round work than women, and for each, the earnings differences become larger when part-time and part-year workers are included instead of focusing on full-time year-round workers (Tables 1 and 2).

Policies to Tackle Gender and Racial Inequity in Earnings

Policymakers have a range of tools to tackle pay equity, close the gender pay gap, and promote fair wages for all workers. Women and their families need policymakers to pursue solutions to prevent and respond to pay discrimination and unfair workplace policies and address the many underlying factors that contribute to the undervaluing of women’s labor and their concentration in lower-paid occupations. To address the diverse factors that contribute to the gender pay gap and inequities between different groups of women, policy solutions must encompass an equally diverse range of actions, including the need to:

Promote transparency laws and salary history bans. Enforcing salary transparency can provide workers with an important tool to ensure they’re being paid fairly and help job candidates negotiate better pay. Furthermore, salary history bans can also contribute to closing the gender and racial wage gaps.

Promote higher wages and better job quality in industries dominated by women. This includes a range of policy actions at both the federal and state levels, such as increasing the minimum wage and abolishing the tipped minimum wage; providing comprehensive access to paid leave, including sick leave and family leave, and child care; and supporting the right of workers to act collectively and join or form a union.

Defend, support, and improve worker protections. This includes ensuring federal agencies, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the US Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, have sufficient resources and continue to fully monitor, uphold, and enforce existing worker nondiscrimination protections and statutes. Rather than seeking to undermine such core civil rights and equal pay protections, they must also be further strengthened by closing loopholes and gaps in statutes.

To learn more about related legislation and executive priorities on equitable work and wages, read IWPR’s Federal Policy Solutions to Advance Gender Equity: Equal Pay. For additional information on state policy solutions, visit IWPR’s State Policy Action Lab (State PAL).

This fact sheet was prepared by Ariane Hegewisch and Miranda Peterson, with data analysis conducted by Dr. Mrinmoyee Chatterjee. Thank you to our key funders for their generous support of IWPR’s core research and flagship products.