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
503, 2015

The Moynihan Report at 50: New Report Finds that the Rise of Single Mothers Does Not Explain Poverty Rates Fully

Fifty years after Daniel Patrick Moynihan released the controversial report, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, a new brief by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) and the Council on Contemporary Families (CCF) titled, “Moynihan’s Half Century: Have We Gone to Hell in a Hand Basket?,” finds that the changes in family structure that concerned him have indeed continued, becoming widespread among Whites as well, but that they do not explain recent trends in poverty and inequality.