Employment and EarningsAdministrator2020-12-09T18:08:37-05:00

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.

BestWorst
1. District of Columbia51. Mississippi
2. Maryland50. West Virginia
3. Massachusetts49. Idaho
4. Connecticut48. Louisiana
5. New York47. Alabama
110, 2000

Why Privatizing Government Services Would Hurt Women Workers

This Research in Brief summarizes key findings of the IWPR report ‘Why Privatizing Government Services Would Hurt Women Workers by Annette Bernhardt and Laura Dresser (forthcoming). Using data from the 1998 Current Population Survey, Bernhardt and Dresser document job growth in the public and private sectors and examine the quality of jobs in terms of wages and benefits. Overall, this research finds that the public sector offers considerably better wages and benefits for women workers than does the private sector. For African American and Hispanic women, and for women who do not have a college education, the difference is between public and private sector employment is especially pronounced. To a large extent, higher wages and better access to health and pension coverage in the public sector can be attributed to higher rates of union coverage.