Will the Gender Pay Gap Ever Be Closed?

March 12, 2024 marks Equal Pay Day in the United States. Originated by the National Committee on Pay Equity in 1996 to raise awareness of the gap between men’s and women’s wages, Equal Pay Day symbolizes how far into year women must work to earn what men earned the previous year.

According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, the median annual pay for female full-time, year-round workers aged 15 and older was $52,360 in 2022, while male workers made $62,350. That means for every dollar earned by men, women earned just $0.84, or women would have to work 19 percent (roughly 10 weeks) longer to make the same amount.

As our chart shows, progress has been made over the past six decades, as the female-to-male pay ratio has gradually improved from less than 60 percent in the 1960s to more than 80 percent in recent years. Progress has been painfully slow, though, and full equality of pay is still a long way out. Moreover, the gender pay gap is not the same for all women. It is significantly wider for Black, Hispanic and Native American women as well as for working moms.

Interestingly, education is not the key to close the gap between male and female renumeration. pay gap. Looking at workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher across various high- and low-earning fields from electrical engineering to social work, the U.S. Census Bureau found a significant pay gap between men and women in all of them. And not only that: an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute found that the gender pay gap even widens with education levels, ranging from 20 percent for workers without a high school diploma to 30 percent for those with an advanced degree.