Pay gap for city's women workers persists

The gender pay gap across New York City has changed little over the last two decades, which can largely be attributed to women earning less than men within the same field, even in occupations that are female-dominated, according to a recent report.

The report’s authors, L.K. Moe and Robert Noble, of the Center for New York City Affairs, explored the impact of occupational segregation, or the uneven distribution of men and women in various industries, on working women.

Women, who make up 49 percent of New York City’s workforce, face an 8-percent pay gap. White women in the same industry, with the same level of education and years of experience, endure a 13-percent pay penalty compared to white men. 

But men of color are also impacted by wage disparities with their white counterparts. The report found that men of color with the same education and experience levels face a 16-percent pay penalty compared to their white male counterparts, while women of color incur the largest pay penalty, at 23 percent, compared to white men. 

The researchers divided the city’s labor force into five broad occupational categories —  high-wage management and business, middle-wage white-collar workers, blue-collar workers, low-wage service workers and careworkers. 

Over a 20-year period, the sectors in which men and women work in the city have shifted. Two decades ago, men mostly worked in blue-collar work and low-wage service jobs. As of 2022, 56 percent of employed men worked in two categories: high-wage management and business occupations, such as finance or engineering, and low-wage work, including retail jobs. 

Women largely in low-wage jobs 

Although the percentage of working women who work in low-wage work has dropped by 15 points over two decades, low-wage work remains the largest occupational category for city women, at 31 percent. About 19 percent of working women were careworkers, compared to just 3 percent of working men. And although the percentage of female workers in the high-wage jobs has grown in the last two decades, the percentage of employed women working in the high-wage management and business sector was 21 percent, compared to 29 percent of men.

“Despite similar rates of employment in low-wage occupations, men are overrepresented in high-wage occupations and women are overrepresented in carework occupations,” the report notes. “Moreover, women workers of color remain overrepresented in low-paying occupations. A third of Black women workers are employed in low-wage occupations, with an additional 27 percent in the carework sector, in which the median hourly wage for women was only $18 per hour in 2022. Similarly, 60 percent of Hispanic women are employed in either low-wage jobs or carework jobs.”

Occupational segregation perpetuates gender pay disparities in two ways, according to the report: first, female-dominated fields tend to be lower paid than male-dominated sectors, which economists call “across-occupation effects.” Second, the pay structure within an occupation may be inequitable in favor of men, which economists dub “within-occupation effects.”

“Our analysis of pay inequity between and within occupations suggests that while both are important, within-occupation pay inequity may be more important. In fact, in the years we analyzed (2003-2022), we found that within-occupation pay inequity accounted for all of the measurable earnings gap,” the report says. “Over the period studied, the overall across-occupation effects remained steady or improved slightly. Simultaneously, within-occupation gaps widened, meaning that even as women got into higher-paid occupations, they were typically making less than their male colleagues.”

The researchers found that the gender pay gap was often most pronounced for the highest earners, even in traditionally female industries. “This finding challenges commonsensical expectations that industries in which women make up the majority of the workforce —  such as education — offer women workers greater opportunity for gender equity,” the authors wrote.

'Systematically left behind'

Notably, the high-wage management and business industries saw a decline in the gender pay gap following the start of the pandemic. The report attributed the decrease to increasingly flexible work schedules and remote work, which may have “facilitated women’s participation in a high-earning sector that has traditionally been associated with rigid in-person work schedules, overtime, and travel requirements.”

It also cited pay increases in the low-wage services sector due to the tight, post-Covid labor market as a reason why the gender pay gap also decreased in that sector.

The report attributed some of the difficulty in eliminating New York City’s gender wage gap to the rapid growth of female-dominated industries such as carework and home health aide jobs.

“Carework is critical for the well-being of New Yorkers and deserves respect and acknowledgment — and yet this challenging work is poorly paid,” the researchers wrote. The economic penalties of these female-dominated, low-paid, and fast-growing job sectors threaten to reverberate for generations into the future.”

The authors called for increased pay for human services and childcare workers, better child care and parental leave options, and for large companies to conduct pay audits to identify and address gender-based wage disparities.

Sharon Sewell-Fairman, the president and CEO of Women Creating Change, said that the report “unveils how women — particularly women of color — have been systematically left behind. … Women are disproportionately represented in lower-paying industries and occupations and face an eight percent pay penalty in New York City. This segregation … limits economic and professional opportunities.”

Earlier this year, the City Council found that occupational segregation accounted for 95 percent of the racial and gender pay gap within the city’s municipal workforce. Last month, the Council passed a series of bills that will require the Department of Citywide Administrative Services to offer career counseling to inform city workers about promotional opportunities and to administer anonymous workplace culture surveys.

clewis@thechiefleader.com

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