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.
Same Gap, Different Year: IWPR says wage gap persists
An analysis released today by the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) shows that women are still almost 40 years from reaching pay equity with men if trends continue at the current pace. Each year the wage gap persists, women fall further behind men in overall earnings and ability to build assets and wealth with a cumulative effect each year in which earnings differences continue.
Same Gap, Different Year: The Gender Wage Gap, 2019 Earnings Differences by Gender, Race, and Ethnicity
The rate of progress toward closing the gender pay gap did not increase in 2019. If the pace of change in the annual earnings ratio continues at the same rate as it has since 1960, it will take another 39 years, until 2059, for men and women to reach parity.1 This projection for equal pay has remained unchanged for the past four years.
OPINION: Why Black student parents are at the epicenter of the student debt crisis — and what we can do about it
Black students with children hold more student loan debt than [...]
