The Gender Pay Gap Yet Again

Repeat after me: the gender pay gap is real. But if you control for the levels of education men and women have, their work experiences, and their personal preferences, it largely disappears, especially for young people.

It would be foolish to say there is no discrimination against women in the workplace, but the more important story is the progress women have made in virtually every area in the past 50 years. Yet when the Census data on the gap came out last week, the press rang familiar alarm bells. Axios wrote, “The median woman working full time in 2024 earned 81% of what the median man earned — a drop of 2 percentage points from the year before.” The reporter continued, calling it “a worrying sign that the slow march toward pay equity for women is stumbling.” Is it?

Let’s look more closely at numbers from two different sources. The Census data were for full-time, year-round workers and showed the gap expanding slightly. The Pew Research Center calculates the gap differently, looking at the median earnings of full- and part-time workers. In their report from March this year, the median women earned 85% of what men earned. In Pew’s analysis, a young woman in the 25-34 year old age group earned 95% of what a young man in this age group earned. In 1982, that figure was 74%. The women in this age group are moving into managerial and other top positions if that is what they want to do. They have improved their education levels and lead men in almost every academic degree. They also hold significantly more higher paying positions.

A look at the polls on the pay gap and related issues shows how men and women think about it. A Pew survey from February 2023 exploring DEI asked whether being a woman (or black, Hispanic, or Asian) made it more difficult to advance where they work. Nationally 49% said being a woman didn’t make it easier or harder to be successful, while 21% said it made it a little harder and 7% a lot harder. Thirty-four percent of women said being a woman made it harder, compared with 21% of men.

In a CBS News/NYT poll from 2016, 65% of Americans thought women were paid less than men who do similar work, with 74% of women giving that response. In a 2018 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, however, 59% said men in their workplaces were not paid more than women for similar work, while two in ten, 21% said they were. In a 2023 Pew question, 17% nationally (and 23% of women) said they had personally experienced discrimination or had been treated unfairly by an employer in hiring, pay, or promotion.

In a 2022 Pew poll that asked about reasons for the gap, 80% said women being treated differently from men was a major or minor explanation for the gap, Almost that many, 75%, said the different choices women make contributed. Women were much more likely than men (61% to 37%) to respond that the way women were treated was a reason, whereas they didn’t differ significantly on the choices item. In another question, slightly more men (28%) than women (21%) said they were the boss or a top manager at their workplace, but 46% of women said they didn’t want to be the boss compared to 37% of men. Although men are doing more domestic work, women still bear more responsibilities for it.

The new NBC News poll found a majority of 18 to 29 year old men and women believed there was no difference for men and women in terms of getting ahead in the workforce, There was a gender divide, with 69% of young men and 51% of young women giving this response. Forty-four percent of the females said it was better to be a man, compared to 27% of young men.

The decision to have children and take time away from the workforce affects women’s earnings significantly. This is not a current priority for young women. In the NBC poll, getting married and having children ranked lower for them than for young men at this early stage, while having a fulfilling job or career and being able to do things you want came up on top for both.

So yes, some discrimination contributes to the pay gap, but other factors such as personal preferences are also important. More importantly, the gap has diminished significantly over the past 20 years, especially for the young, as women have made extraordinary progress.