Salary by Gender has Spread further Apart

The equivalency of education for women and men in the same disciple is not a guarantee of equal pay. This is true even if both went to the same school for their education. Also. more likely than not, a woman from a highly rated school may still get paid less than a man who graduated from a lesser school. It appears to be more of a gender issue when it comes to salary. Under Trump’s administration, women are experiencing a greater variance. A partial of a longer essay on the topic.

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The gender pay gap widened slightly in 2025: How Trump’s first year in office hurt women and what states can do to fix it | Economic Policy Institute

Key takeaways:

• The persistent gender wage gap widened slightly in 2025; women were paid 18.6% less than men on average after controlling for race and ethnicity, education, age, marital status, and state.
• Women are paid less than men across all education levels. Women with a graduate degree earn less, on average, than men with only a college degree.
• The gender pay gap worsened following a year of Trump administration attacks on workers, including cuts to the federal workforce; attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts; ordering mass deportations; and undermining child care and home care providers.
• States can narrow the gender pay gap with policies that guarantee access to paid family and medical leave, mandate pay transparency, raise the minimum wage, and make it easier for workers to form unions.

March 26 is was Equal Pay Day. A reminder there is still a significant pay gap between men and women in our country. The date represents how far into 2026 women would have to work on top of the hours they worked in 2025 simply to match what men were paid in 2025.

On an hourly basis, women were paid 18.6% less on average than men in 2025. This was after controlling for race and ethnicity, education, age, marital status, and state. After narrowing to a series low of 18.0% in 2024 (likely driven by a strong labor market recovery from the COVID-19 recession that lifted wages more at the lower end of the overall wage distribution), the gender wage gap widened slightly in 2025. Though it was far from a total reversal of the last few years’ progress. The slight worsening in 2025 reflects the slowing of low-end wage growth and the economic consequences of Trump’s first year back in office.

Women are paid less than men due to discrimination associated with occupational segregation, devaluation of women’s work, and societal norms. Much of this takes root well before women enter the labor market. The wage gap is smallest among lower-wage workers partly because the minimum wage creates a wage floor. At the 10th percentile, women are paid $1.39 (or 9.1%) less an hour than men. The wage gap at the middle is $4.12 an hour (or 14.7%). Women at the 90th percentile of their wage distribution are paid $14.05 (or 19.6%) less an hour than men at the 90th percentile of the wage distribution.

Women are paid less than men at every education level

Women have seen gains in educational attainment over the last five decades. However, they still face a significant wage gap. Among workers, women slightly outnumber men in the college-educated labor force and are significantly more likely to obtain a graduate degree than men.

Even so, women are paid less than men at every education level, as shown in Figure A.

Among workers who have only a high school diploma, women are paid 21.5% less than men. Among workers who have a college degree, women are paid 23.8% less than men. That gap of $12.07 per hour translates to roughly $25,100 lower annual earnings for a full-time worker. Women with an advanced degree also experience a significant hourly wage gap of $17.70 in 2025, amounting to over $36,800 annually.

What the data makes clear is, women cannot educate themselves out of the gender wage gap. Systemic inequities are so persistent that women with advanced degrees are paid less per hour, on average, than men with only college degrees. Men with a college degree are paid $50.61 per hour on average compared with $49.67 for women with an advanced degree.

However in comparison, Black and Hispanic women experience larger wage gaps . . .

 Emma Cohn and Elise Gould