In a previous post on the gender wage gap, I outlined how the "77 Cents" statistic tossed around so frequently in the gender pay equity discussion is misleading. If you remember, I pointed out that the study by Blau and Kahn found that about 59% of the gender wage gap could be explained by non-discriminatory factors such as occupation, industry, experience, race, and union status. Occupational category provided the largest explanation, and accounted for 27.4% of the gender gap. So let's take a closer look at earnings by occupational category and see what else we can learn about the gender pay gap.
The Current Population Survey collects information by gender and occupational category (among other characteristics). Data for 2009 were published in a June 2010 report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Highlights of Women's Earnings in 2009. Using this data, we can take a closer look at the the pay gap by occupational category. For each of the twenty-two major occupational categories, there are three key pieces of information:
- The relative size of the occupational category - in terms of number of workers - is represented by the size of the sphere;
- The percentage of females in the occupational category is presented along the horizontal axis;
- The ratio of female-to-male median weekly earnings is presented along the vertical axis.
Here's how the twenty-two occupational categories compare on these three dimensions:
Here's some of the key observations from this infographic:
- Office and administrative support occupations employ the most individuals (14% of the total workforce age 16 and over);
- Farming, forestry and fishing occupations employ the least individuals (0.7% of the total workforce age 16 and over);
- Healthcare support occupations have the largest percentage of females (88.9%);
- Construction and extraction occupations have the smallest percentage of females (2.1%);
- Computer and mathematical occupations have the smallest difference between female and male median weekly earnings (ratio = 96.5%);
- Legal occupations have the largest difference between female and male median weekly earnings (ratio = 56.6%);
- In all twenty-two occupational categories, the ratio of female-to-male median weekly earnings is less than one.
The weighted average female-to-male earnings ratio across the twenty-two occupational categories is 80% (weighted by the number of females in each occupational category). This seems pretty close to the "77 Cents" statistic number... What's going on?
To find out, we need to take an even deeper look within these twenty-two occupational categories. Let's take a look at the "legal"occupation, which has the smallest ratio of female-to-male median weekly earnings. Within the "legal" category, there are four sub-categories:
- Lawyers;
- Judges, magistrates and other judicial workers;
- Paralegals and legal assistants;
- Miscellaneous legal support workers.
When we look at the distribution of males and females across these four sub-categories, we see an interesting pattern:
Most males in the legal category are in the "Lawyers" subcategory (77.2%), while the majority of females inthe legal category are in the "Paralegals" subcategory (86.7%). It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that paralegals typically earn less than lawyers. This goes a long way in terms of explaining the gender pay gap within the legal category.
So why can't we just cut right to the chase and look at the smallest occupational sub-groupings possible? It seems like we could get to the heart of the issue by comparing males and females who have the same job titles, right? Thr problem is lack of data. The deeper into occupational sub-categories we go, the fewer people there are to study. This makes quantitative analysis harder. In fact, for the judges, paralegal and legal support sub-groupings, the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't even present earnings data for males because the sample size is so small...
Looking at the issue of pay equity at the "macro" level of occupation is too broad to answer the question, but when we get down to the appropriate level for comparisons between men and women, there's too few data points to study. So what are our options? At this point, they're kind of limited. Until we can get plentiful and reliable data at the micro level, we're stuck from an empirical perspective. Maybe the new data collection tool planned by the (wo)men of NEPET will give us the data to finally put this issue to rest.
Stephanie R. Thomas is an economic and statistical consultant specializing in EEO issues and employment litigation risk management. For more than a decade, she's been working with businesses and government agencies providing expert EEO analysis. Stephanie has published several articles on examining compensation systems with respect to equity. She is the host of The Proactive Employer, and is the Director of the Equal Employment Advisory and Litigation Support Division of MCG.
I just read an article over the weekend in American Mensa that briefly spoke to this topic (I can't claim membership...my husband is the Mensa member). I'll try to find it to quote the article exactly, but the basic message was that women earn more than men if you compare exact job duties (about 114% to 100% female to male).
We compensation professionals know that numbers can often be what "you" want them to be.
Posted by: Kelly | 09/09/2010 at 06:52 AM
Kelly, by all means come back and share the source of the study. Many can use it in the profession.
Stephanie, another great blog! Thank you so much!
Posted by: Paul Weatherhead | 09/10/2010 at 07:47 AM