Gender Pay Gap – US
See the data: bit.ly/KIB_PayGapUS
Play a data game! Spot the jobs where women are actually paid more than men.
Analysis
A pretty depressing picture of the gender pay gap in the United States, non?. The gap is uniformly present across every industry and sector. On average, men earn 17% more than women.
One caveat around this data from the US Bureau of Labour Statistics. It’s very patchy. Of 570 vocations, there was only complete male and female salary data for 148 jobs (25%). Not a bad sample but patterns and exceptions may be present in a fuller dataset. Please bear that in mind in your interpretation.
From that sample, here’s the breakdown:
Women wanting the biggest earnings potential might want to check out pharmacy, law, business or IT – categories that also appear towards the top of highest paid mens’s jobs. Physical therapy (typical salary $67.9k) stands out as a category that appears on the top list for women but not for men.
The best-paid job title in America is CEO – if you’re a man. The typical female CEO gets less than the highest-earning female pharmacist or lawyer.
Law has the widest pay gap of all, with men typically earning 43.3% more than their female counterparts. The earnings gap between male and female CEOs is smaller than between laywers. But the amount a female lawyer can earn (typical salary $82.6k) is still higher than what a typical female CEO takes home ($81.7k)
Healthcare technologists do stuff like diagnostic imaging, lab testing or surgical assistance. And the data suggests they earn the same whatever their gender. People in service industries like housekeeping and food are not quite at gender parity, with men earning 1-2% more than women.
Biggest Gender Pay Gap increases (2012 v 2014)
We took a snapshot of this data back in 2012 so we were able to do a two year comparison. Top 15:
Business operations 54% increase*
Police & patrol officers 27%
Computer support specialists 26.3%
Medical Scientists 23.5%
Operations research analysts 20.8%
Clergy 16.7%
Physicians & surgeons 16.7%
Human Resource managers 14%
Receptionists 13.5%
Recreation & fitness workers 13.1%
Bartenders 12.8%
Bookkeepers 10.9%
Diagnostic technicians 10.1%
IT Managers 10%
(*That ‘Business Operations’ 54% outlier seems way counter-intuitive compared to the rest of the data, so may be an anomaly.)
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