() — The gender pay gap generally refers, in monetary terms, to something that measures how much women earn for every dollar a man earns.
But that gap is also indirectly a marker of time, since women on average earn less and therefore have to work longer to catch up with men.
How much longer? This is what Equal Pay Day is for: a rough measure of how many months of the new year a woman has to work for her earnings to match what a man earned the year before.
In 2023, Equal Pay Day falls on March 14. That means the average full-time working woman has to work about two and a half months longer than the average man just to earn what she did last year.
That’s based on the Census Bureau’s most recent estimate of the gender pay gap, which was 84 cents among full-time, year-round workers. When part-time, temporary, and gig workers are also counted, the gap widens and the time to catch up lengthens.
The good news is that the pay gap has narrowed, albeit slowly, in the last two decades. And the Day of Equal Salary, inaugurated in 1996 by the National Committee for Salary Equity, now arrives about a month earlier. In 2005, for example, Equal Pay Day was April 19.
The bad news is that Equal Pay Day is still around in 2023, as pay equity is still a long way off.
Equal Pay Day varies widely for different groups
Equal Pay Day in March for women in general is largely symbolic, in part because the date varies widely based on race and ethnicity, occupation, geography, age, and other issues.
“March 14 marks the launch of a full year of Equal Pay Days that will highlight the pay gaps experienced by women of different races, ethnicities, sexual orientation and gender identity, and by those who are also mothers,” said Noreen Farrell. , the president of the advocacy group Equal Pay Today.
For example, the group notes that this year’s Equal Pay Day, relative to median earnings for a white male, will be April 5 for Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander women, April 27, July for black women, October 5 for Latina women and November 30 for native and indigenous women.
The Institute for Women’s Policy Research publishes an annual report that breaks down the pay gap by occupation. The result of their latest analysis: “In 2022, women earned less than men for full-time weekly work in nearly all occupations, including in 19 of the 20 largest occupations for women, and in all 20 largest occupations. great for men.
In other words, even in fields where women dominate, they still earn less than men except for one job: teaching assistant. That’s the only occupation for which IWPR found no gender difference in median weekly earnings for full-time working women and men.
Perpetual pay gaps mean huge financial losses over time
The gender pay gap equates to large income losses not only for individual women, but also for their families.
That restricts their ability to build financial security over time and increases the risk that they will have to borrow just to cover basic expenses and emergencies. The effect of lower wages during a woman’s career will also result in a smaller Social Security check in retirement.
Take for example the current wage gap, which amounts to $9,954 in median earnings per year, according to the National Women’s Law Center. The group points out that this difference in a woman’s life could pay for all of the following and then some: two months of childcare ($1,883), three months of rent ($3,573), three months of health insurance premiums ($1,544), two months of student loan payments ($544), and six tanks of gas ($316).
The NWLC also estimates that the current gender pay gap can mean a loss of nearly $400,000 for women and their families over a 40-year career. For minority women, the loss is much greater: approximately $1 million over a lifetime.
