Clean Sweep: Similarly Situated Female Workers Paid Less Than Males

EEOC releases data dashboard for 2017-2018 showing women are paid less in every salary band, demonstrating significant ramifications for women's standard of living and retirement.

Sixty years after the U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, women still earn far less than men in every salary band across the board.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on Tuesday - National Equal Pay Day - released a comprehensive data dashboard that offers anonymized historic pay data for 2017-2018.

The dashboard shows that 75% of workers who earn $208,000+ are male, while 58% of workers who earn $19,239 or less are female. ]

The EEOC says Hawaii is the only state where the median pay band for men and women was the same. In every other state, the median pay band for men was higher. The largest pay disparity in both 2017 and 2018 was found in Wyoming.

In a statement, EEOC Chairperson Charlotte A. Burrows said pay disparities persist because they are hidden from view. She said the EEOC data collection effort “could be a unique and critically important resource for helping the Commission better identify and combat pay discrimination.”

For example, the EEOC said 2018 data shows some employers in Silicon Valley have significant gender disparities compared to their industry counterparts. One employer had a -53% pay gap for Hispanic female professionals compared to white male professions, while another had a -52% pay gap for Asian female technicians compared to white male technicians.

The EEOC in 2016 voted to require employers to file EEO-1 forms containing pay data but the effort was derailed in the GOP administration of Pres. Donald Trump. A federal judge reinstated the program in 2019.

The pay data is reported on so-called EEO-1 forms that were collected from an estimated by 70,000 private employers and federal contractors. The dashboard compares median pay for similarly situated employee.

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-WA, applauded the dashboard, stating women “don’t have the information they need to fight back against unequal pay… This is an important new tool that will help emplower people with the data they need to demand equal pay.”

Limited Usefulness

While the data is useful for making general observations about the workplace, it has limited value as presented.

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