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The gap between what men and women in the US earn recently widened for the first time in two decades, according to a Census Bureau report drawing on 2023 data.
Men working full-time, year round earned a median $66,790 in 2023, a 3% change from the previous year, the report found. Women, meanwhile, saw wages grow by half that much, earning a median of $55,240, up 1.5% from 2022.
Overall, these women earned 83% of what men earned in 2023, down from 84% in 2022. It’s the first statistically significant annual decrease the Census Bureau has documented since 2003.
The disparity widened for working women of color, with Black and Latina women earning 64 cents and 51 cents on the dollar compared to white, non-hispanic men, respectively, according to an analysis of the data from the National Partnership for Women and Families.
While one of the main goals of pay transparency laws is to narrow gender-based pay inequities, the Census Bureau report suggests this legislation isn’t yet playing out as policymakers intended, at least not at the national level.
Pay transparency hasn’t yet closed the pay gap. A number of factors contribute to a persistent gender wage gap in the US, including the fact that women account for most of the low-wage workforce, and are less successful when negotiating their compensation than men. And the gap doesn’t get better as employees move up in their organizations: Separate research has documented a similar disparity between what men and women earn in the C-suite.
Employers are paying closer attention to their compensation practices in light of a heightened focus on pay transparency, HR Brew reported last year, but only 36% of managers reported being trained on the importance of pay equity, a December survey by the Society for Human Resource Management found.
To stay on top of potential biases that can hinder women’s earning potential, HR pros should consider auditing compensation requests and including gender breakdowns, Laura Kray, a psychologist at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, previously told HR Brew. “HR should be tracking requests, tracking responses, justifying these decisions…and making sure that it’s not [that] the identical ask is being responded to differently for men versus women,” she said.