Employment and Earnings - IWPR

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.

Best	Worst
1. District of Columbia	51. Mississippi
2. Maryland	50. West Virginia
3. Massachusetts	49. Idaho
4. Connecticut	48. Louisiana
5. New York	47. Alabama

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2502, 2016

Equal Pay Would Cut Poverty for Working Women in the South by More than Half

A new report, released in advance of Super Tuesday, by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), finds that the gender wage gap costs women in the South $155.4 billion per year. Closing the wage gap would reduce relatively high poverty rate for working women in the southern United States by more than half. The Status of Women in the South is the first report to provide a comprehensive portrait of the status of women, particularly the status of women of color, in the southern states, grading each state on six different topic areas related to women’s economic, political, health, and social status.

1902, 2016