New Census Data Show Continuing Gender Segregation and Pay Disparities in Jobs

Last week, the Census Bureau released new American Community Survey data covering the period 2005 to 2009. Remapping Debate has now taken those data to analyse gender segregation and pay disparities in jobs, and its data visualisations provide the first snapshot published.

Remapping Debate’s analysis reveals striking differences between working men and women. Within a single occupation, median pay for men almost always exceeds that for women, often by a substantial amount. Furthermore, the median wages in jobs dominated by men are higher than in those occupations dominated by women.

In the top 25 highest-paying occupations, ranked by median earnings of men, the median earnings of women are less than 90 percent of those of men in all but two cases.

For occupations of more than 100,000 workers:

In occupations in which men accounted for more than 90 percent of the workforce, the median income of men always exceeds that of women, and in most cases the earnings of women are less than 90 percent that of men. Additionally, of jobs dominated by men, there are 20 occupations in which the median earnings for men exceed $40,000 per year.

In occupations dominated by women, jobs in which women are at least 75 percent of workers, women always earned less than men. In contrast to those occupations dominated by men, in jobs with more than 75 percent of workers being women, there are only 5 which have a median annual pay for women over $40,000.