by Holly Corbett | Forbes
This Equal Pay Day, the data shows the wage gap closed by 1 cent. On the surface, this looks like progress. Yet these numbers are not telling the whole story.
Equal Pay Day falls on March 15 this year, which signifies how far into the new year the average woman must work to be paid what the average man was paid the previous year. Last year Equal Pay Day landed farther into the year on March 23, and revealed a slightly larger gender wage gap of 82 cents on the dollar as compared to this year’s 83 cents. On the surface, this looks like progress.
Yet these numbers are not telling the whole story. In February 2022, 1.1 million fewer women were in the labor force than at the start of the pandemic. The latest figure accounts only for the women who remained in the workforce full time, and fails to reflect the financial impact for the millions of women who lost their jobs or who were pushed out of the workforce due to lack of childcare or other factors—many of whom were low-paid workers—or the women moving to part-time jobs. This caused the overall median earnings for the women who remained working full time to rise.
Read the full article on the Forbes website.
