Report from Self Financial:
Women’s labor force participation has grown significantly in the last 70 years; while men still outnumber women in the workforce, the gap has narrowed considerably. More women than ever are pursuing higher education, and in fact, women have earned the majority of college degrees for the past few decades. Despite this progress, however, a sizable gender pay gap between men and women remains. The latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that women earn, on average, just 81 cents for every dollar earned by a man. That is, the ratio of annual earnings for full-time working women to full-time working men is 81 percent—a pay gap of 19 percent.
The gender pay gap has been shrinking steadily until recent years. In 1979, full-time women earned just 62 percent of what full-time men earned, but over the next 30 years that number had risen to 80 percent. After decades of improvement, however, the ratio of women’s earnings to men’s earnings has remained relatively stable, hovering just above 80 percent. While some of the remaining gap can be explained by factors such as occupational segregation and work experience, other factors that are difficult to quantify and measure, including discrimination, also play a role.
To find the metropolitan areas with the biggest gender pay gaps, researchers at Self Financial analyzed the latest data on earnings from the U.S. Census Bureau. The researchers ranked metros according to the ratio of full-time working women’s earnings to full-time working men’s earnings. Researchers also calculated median annual earnings for full-time women, median annual earnings for full-time men, the industry with the largest wage gap, and the occupation with the largest wage gap.
To improve relevance, only metropolitan areas with at least 100,000 people were included in the analysis. Additionally, metro areas were grouped into cohorts based on population size. In the report, small metros have between 100,000 and 349,999 residents; midsize metros have between 350,000 and 999,999 residents; and large metros have 1,000,000 or more residents.
The analysis found that in the Asheville metro area, women earn 92.1% of what men earn, on average. Here is a summary of the data for the Asheville, NC metro area:
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Women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s: 92.1%
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Median annual earnings for full-time women: $39,219
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Median annual earnings for full-time men: $42,570
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Industry with the largest wage gap: Administrative and support and waste management services
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Occupation with the largest wage gap: Construction and extraction occupations
No idea who Self Financial is, but a “study” of this type that doesn’t control for years of experience and job type is nearly meaningless. Maybe they’ve done that in a deeper piece that wasn’t reported here.