Women worked 100 days more to equal men’s earnings

Happy Equal Pay Day! On April 10 U.S. women caught up with men’s 2017 earnings. That’s 100 days more work for the same annual paycheck. Nationally men outearn women at every wage level. In Vermont the overall gender wage gap has shrunk over 30 years, but progress is uneven. High-paid women face a larger gap than their low-paid counterparts. In the lowest 10th percentile women made less per hour in 2017, adjusted for inflation, than men did in 1987. And the smaller gap hides bad news for men: Except at the top, their wages haven’t yet returned to pre-recession levels.

Age matters
Vermont women under 35 and over 64 are more likely to be working now than they were a decade ago. The state ranks eighth among the states for the share of women working at all ages, and at over 80 percent employment, prime-age Vermont women (35 to 54) are more likely to have jobs than their cohort in the U.S. as a whole. Still, a smaller share of both men and women are employed in Vermont now than before the recession.

Substandard wages
Forty percent of Vermont women workers earn less than $15 per hour, the proposed new minimum wage. That’s a greater share than for men, and also greater than for women in three other New England states, including New Hampshire. As many as 64,000 Vermont women could benefit directly or indirectly from an increase in the minimum wage.

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