Equal Pay Day 2023: Where the U.S. gender pay gap stands

Equal Pay Day, which raises consciousness about the gender pay gap in the United States, falls on March 14 in 2023. 

Advocacy organizations say the day symbolizes how a ways into a brand new yr a lady should paintings to earn what a person did in the earlier yr. 

VERIFY checked out the information to peer how once a year pay compares between women and men. 

Do ladies need to paintings till March 14 to earn as a lot cash as males did the earlier yr?

Yes, ladies need to paintings till March 14, 2023, to earn as a lot cash as males did the earlier yr, according to the newest census information. 

Advocacy organizations similar to the American Association of University Women (AAUW) say the date for Equal Pay Day is according to the newest U.S. Census figures. 

The most recent U.S. Census Bureau data compares males’s and ladies’s median profits in 2021. Median profits describe the ones of a employee in the fiftieth percentile, or proper in the heart. Census information for 2022 isn’t to be had but. 

Women who labored full-time, year-round took house 83.7% of the pay that males did in 2021, the census information display. This interprets to about $61,180 in median profits for males in comparison to $51,226 in median profits for ladies in 2021.

In different phrases, a lady must paintings about 1.2 instances longer than a person to make the identical amount of cash.

So does that upload as much as March 14 in 2023? VERIFY did the math. 

If ladies need to paintings kind of 1.2 instances longer to earn the identical amount of cash as males do in 12 months, that implies they must paintings 438 days. This provides as much as an additional 73 days on best of 365, which lands on March 14 – Equal Pay Day. 

More fresh salary gap data published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2022 supply a identical outcome.

In 2022, Equal Pay Day fell on March 15, the earliest the U.S. had ever marked the instance earlier than this yr, the White House said. Though the U.S. has made some growth over the remaining a number of a long time, there may be nonetheless paintings to do with a purpose to shut the gender pay gap, professionals say. 

An analysis of both full- and part-time workers conducted by Pew Research Center discovered that U.S. ladies normally earned 82 cents for each and every buck that males earned in 2022. 

This is an important building up from when ladies have been making 65 cents to the buck in 1985. But the gender pay gap “has barely closed in the past two decades,” because it’s nonetheless about the identical because it was once in 2002 when ladies earned 80 cents to the buck, the research famous. 

There are a handful of key components that affect the gender pay gap, Ariane Hegewisch, senior analysis fellow at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, advised VERIFY.

One of the ones is occupational segregation. Women are continuously much more likely to paintings in numerous fields, and jobs which might be basically carried out by way of ladies with the identical stage of schooling and years of enjoy pay not up to jobs basically carried out by way of males, Hegewisch defined. 

In addition, the gender pay gap is wider for ladies who’re a part of sure racial or ethnic teams. Pew discovered that Black ladies earned 70% up to white males in 2022, whilst Hispanic ladies earned handiest 65% as a lot in 2022. 

For white ladies, the ratio stood at about 83%, just about the identical as the general profits gap, in keeping with Pew. 

“There’s a disparity not just about gender, but around race and gender,” Jessica Kriegel, leader scientist of place of work tradition at Culture Partners, advised VERIFY. “The intersection of various different demographics can greatly affect where you lay in the pay scale.”