Millennial women are the most educated generation of women in the United States and are now more likely than men to have a college degree. At the same time, progress on closing the gender wage gap has stalled for nearly two decades, indicating that unequal pay continues to be a challenge to new generations of women workers.
Figure 1. Earnings for College-Educated Millennials Projected to Age 60
For the Millennials (born 1980-1984) with Bachelor’s degrees or higher, who work full-time, year-round:
- At age 25, women were earning $44,119 and men were earning $49,050. (Female-to-male ratio =.90 or 10 percent gender wage gap.)
- By age 37, women were earning $61,278 and men were earning $83,747. (Female-to-male ratio =.73 or 27 percent gender wage gap.) Between the ages of 25 and 37, college-educated Millennial women would have lost $172,728, compared with men, if they had worked full-time, year-round in every year.
- Projected to age 60, assuming the college-educated Millennials experience earnings growth similar to similarly educated women and men that came before them, women would be earning $73,136 at age 60 and men would be earning $121,061. (Female-to-male ratio =.60 or 40 percent gender wage gap.) Between the ages of 25 and 60, college-educated Millennial women, compared with men, would have lost more than a million dollars—$1,066,721 —if they work full-time, year-round in every year.
Table 1. Cumulative Losses from Gender Wage Gap for College-Educated Millennial Women Born 1980-1984
Note: Data reflect the difference between the median annual earnings of women and men who worked full-time, year-round. Earnings are presented in 2017 dollars. Source: IWPR analysis of data from the 1975-2017 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, Version 5.0).
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About the author
Jeff Hayes is a sociologist and Scholar in Residence at American University and works on research examining women’s and men’s employment, job quality, and economic security over the life course, including retirement. He currently oversees IWPR’s work analyzing usage and cost of paid family and medical leave in the United States and provides technical assistance to several states and localities considering how they might improve workers’ access to paid leave for their own health needs or to care for family members. Dr. Hayes has been interviewed on paid leave, income security, and job quality issues in The Washington Post, MarketWatch, Huffington Post, CNN Money, CNBC, and other outlets around the country.
Dr. Hayes has testified on the costs of paid leave proposals before the New York City Council, the DC city council, and the Maryland House Economic Matters committee. He is currently serving on the Maryland Task Force to Study Family and Medical Leave Insurance. He served on the Commission to Modernize Social Security and has provided technical assistance to members of the US Congress on including credits for caregiving in Social Security. Dr. Hayes is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. As an experienced survey researcher, Dr. Hayes advises on IWPR’s survey work and conducts major surveys such as the IWPR/Rockefeller Survey of Economic Security.
Prior to joining IWPR, Dr. Hayes worked at the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy and the Harvard Project on Global Working Families, analyzing how labor conditions affect children’s health and development around the world, and taught research methods at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He holds Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Religious Studies from the University of Virginia.
Heidi Hartmann is the President Emerita and Senior Research Economist at the Washington-based Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), a scientific research organization that she founded in 1987 to meet the need for women-centered, policy-oriented research. Dr. Hartmann is also a Distinguished Economist In-Residence for Gender and Economic Analysis at American University and serves as the Editor of the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy.
Dr. Hartmann lectures internationally on women, economics, and public policy; frequently testifies before the U.S. Congress; and is often cited as an authority in various media outlets, such as CNN, ABC News, The New York Times, and PBS NewsHour. She has published numerous articles in journals and books and her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. She is a co-author of several IWPR reports, including Women’s and Men’s Employment and Unemployment in the Great Recession; Still A Man’s Labor Market: The Long-Term Earnings Gap; Unnecessary Losses: Costs to Americans of the Lack of Family and Medical Leave; Equal Pay for Working Families, and Strengthening Social Security for Women. She served as Chair of the Board of the American Academy of Political Science, and Treasurer of the National Council of Women’s Organizations.
Prior to founding IWPR, Dr. Hartmann was on the faculties of Rutgers University and the New School for Social Research and worked at the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In 1994, Dr. Hartmann was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship Award for her work in the field of women and economics. She is an economist with a B.A. from Swarthmore College and M. Phil and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University, all in economics. She is the recipient of two honorary degrees. She was named a Charlotte Perkins Gilman Fellow by the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 2014, and in 2017 she received the Distinguished Career Award from the American Sociological Association.
