Vermont leads the nation in pay parity
Vermont should celebrate the recent announcement that the gap in earnings between men and women was the smallest in the country in 2019. According to a study by the National Women’s Law Center, the typical female Vermont worker earned about 91 cents for every $1 earned by the typical male worker.
The gap closed, in part, because median earnings for women working full time year round rose 5.6 percent from the previous year. That was the good news. The bad news was that median earnings for men fell a little more than 1 percent.
The new study did not include information about race. However, other available U.S. Census data show that from 2015 to 2019 a typical nonwhite female worker in Vermont earned in salary and wages 78 cents for every dollar earned by a male worker (this category includes men of all races). To close these gaps, women’s earnings will need to rise faster than men’s, and earnings for women of color faster still. People earn different amounts, but those differences should not be determined by race or gender.
THIS MONTH
In June 315,611 Vermonters were working or available to work, an increase of about 2,800 since April. Those looking for work—unemployed workers—drove a quarter of the increase, a likely sign of rising confidence in the economy. But there is still room to grow to get back to pre-pandemic levels. The labor force is down by about 28,000 workers compared with January 2020.
