Trends in Employment and Earnings
Women’s status in the area of employment and earnings has improved on two indicators since the publication of IWPR’s last national report on the status of women, the 2004 Status of Women in the States, and remained unchanged or declined on two others. Women’s median annual earnings for full-time, year-round work in 2013 ($39,157) were nearly identical to their earnings for similar work in 2002 ($39,108 when adjusted to 2013 dollars). The gender earnings ratio improved during this time from 76.6 to 78.3 percent, narrowing the gender wage gap by 1.7 percentage points, and the share of women working in professional or managerial occupations grew from 33.2 to 39.9 percent. Women’s labor force participation rate, however, declined from 59.6 in 2002 to 57.0 percent in 2014.
Still a Man’s Labor Market: The Long-Term Earnings Gap
Although the wage gap, measured by conventional methods, has narrowed in the last several decades, with women who work full-time full-year now earning 77 percent of what men earn (compared with 59 cents on the male dollar 40 years ago), its sweeping effects are largely unacknowledged because its measurement is limited to a single year and restricted to only a portion of the workforce. When accumulated over many years for all men and women workers, the losses to women and their families due to the wage gap are large and can be devastating.
The Impact of Disabilities on Mothers’ Work Participation: Examining Differences between Single and Married Mothers
This study examines the prevalence of disabilities among mothers and children and analyzes how these disabilities influence mothers’ work participation.
The Gender Wage Gap: Progress of the 1980s Fails to Carry Through
The gender wage gap is much narrower now than it was at the start of the revolutionary decade of the 1960s, when long-standing barriers to women’s educational achievement and employment success began to be dismantled and the first of a series of critical equal employment opportunity standards were enacted by Congress.
