Men still tend to make more money than women across all racial and ethnic groups, according to US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data released this week.
The discrepancy is highest for Black, Native American and Alaska Native women.
“The dashboard illustrates what we have long known — that pay disparities based on sex and race persist in almost every industry both at the national level and in nearly every state,” EEOC Chair Charlotte A. Burrows said in a statement. “The EEOC remains dedicated to using all of our tools to combat pay discrimination and to fulfill the promise of equal opportunity in our nation’s civil rights laws.”
The EEOC data dashboard provides the historic, first-time collection of 2017 and 2018 pay data reported by approximately 70,000 private employers and some federal contractors with 100 or more employees each year, representing more than 100 million workers.
According to the data, in 2018, the national median pay band for men was one pay band higher than the median pay band for women ($39,000 to $49,900 compared with $30,600 to $38,900). The previous year, the national median pay band for men was two pay bands higher than for women ($39,000 to $49,900 compared with $24,400 to $30,600).
The data also show that in 2018, in each race and ethnicity category, women were in a lower median pay band than men of the same race or ethnicity. Black women, Native American women and Alaska Native women were in the lowest median pay band of all groups ($19,200 to $24,400).
Hawaii was the only state in which the median pay bands for men and women were the same in 2018 and 2017 ($30,600 to $38,900), according to the EEOC.
Meanwhile, an independent study by QRFY, based on analysis of US census data, found that New Hampshire has the greatest gender pay gap, at $18,044 annually. Utah, North Dakota, Virginia and Louisiana followed with gender pay gaps of $17,528, $14,082, $14,053 and $14,048, respectively.
