Working & The Economy

Equal Pay Day: Here’s how Pa.’s gender pay gap stacks up to the rest of the country | The Numbers Racket

April 2, 2019 6:30 am

Today, Tuesday, April 2, is Equal Pay Day across the nation. According to Census data, the median income for a woman working full-time is 80 percent of that earned by a man, as Voice of America reports. This week, on the Numbers Racket, we’re going to take a look at what that means for Pennsylvania.

The data comes from a report put together by the American Association of University Women and another by GlassDoor.com.

$52,111: The median salary, as of 2017, for a man working full-time in Pennsylvania.

$41,977: The median salary, as of 2017, for a woman working full-time in Pennsylvania.

80.46 percent: The earnings ratio between the median incomes of men and women working full-time in Pennsylvania, as of 2017.

24: Pennsylvania’s nationwide ranking, as of 2017, for the median income gap between men and women, both working full-time.

READ MORE: It’s Equal Pay Day. Here’s how Pa. lawmakers want to close the gender wage gap

Now, these are the old district numbers, but here’s a breakdown, by congressional district, as of 2017:

Source: American Association of University WomenSo what does the rest of the nation look like?

$52,146: The national median salary, as of 2017, for an American man working full-time, which means Pennsylvania finishes just below the national median.

$41,977: The national median salary, as of 2017, for an American woman working full-time.

80.50 percent: The income ratio between the median salaries for men and women working full time, nationwide, as of 2017.

California finishes atop the AAUW rankings list. The median income for full-time working men in the Golden State, as of 2017, was $52,487, compared to $46,783 for women. That’s an income ratio of 89.13 percent, the report concluded.

Washington, D.C. ($74,877/$66,679) finished second. New York ($55,636/48,901), Florida ($42,261/$36,746), and Delaware ($54,657/$47,052) rounded out the top five.

Louisiana — where a man working full-time earned a median income of $50,445, compared to $34,708 for a woman — finished last in the rankings list. Utah ($52,249/$37,252), Indiana ($50,782/$37,167), Alabama $48,199/$35,414), and West Virginia ($47,425/$35,078) completed the bottom five states for the median income gap, the report showed.

From Glassdoor, here’s how the United States shapes up compared to other countries (the economics website last took a similar pulse in 2016):

But, there are some encouraging signs, as the Glassdoor report notes:

Based on over 425,000 salaries shared by full-time U.S. employees on Glassdoor, men earn 21.4 percent higher base pay than women on average (or women earn 79 cents per dollar men earn). However, comparing workers of similar age, education and experience, shrinks the gap to 19.1 percent. Furthermore, after comparing workers with the same job title, employer and location, the gender pay gap in the U.S. falls to 4.9 percent (95.1 cents per dollar).

Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our web site. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of photos and graphics.

John L. Micek

A 3-decade veteran of the news business, John L. Micek is the Pennsylvania Capital-Star's Editor-in-Chief. An award-winning political reporter, Micek’s career has taken him from small town meetings and Chicago City Hall to Congress and the Pennsylvania Capitol. His weekly column on U.S. politics is syndicated to 800 newspapers nationwide by Cagle Syndicate. He also contributes commentary and analysis to broadcast outlets in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Micek’s first novel, “Ordinary Angels,” was released in 2019 by Sunbury Press.