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
509, 2014

Women Gained 2 Out of Every 3 Jobs Added in August; Men Still Short 350,000 Jobs from Pre-Recession Employment Levels

According to an Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) analysis of the September employment report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), although the total number of jobs lost in the recession has been recovered (139,118,000 jobs in August 2014 vs 138,350,000 jobs in December 2007 when the recession began), men are still short 350,000 from the start of the recession.