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NY women still earn less than men — but it’s getting closer

Full-time female workers in New York State earned a median wage of $808 a week in 2014, or 84.6% of the $955 of their male counterparts, according to  the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Full-time female workers in New York State earned a median wage of $808 a week in 2014, or 84.6% of the $955 of their male counterparts, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Photo Credit: NYPD

Women are getting closer but are still not equal when it comes to pay.

In 2014, full-time female workers in New York State earned a median wage of $808 a week, or 84.6% of the $955 median weekly earnings of their male counterparts, according to new data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That’s an improvement from 2013, when median weekly wages for women here were only $758 – and 83.3% of the $910 median weekly earnings for their male counterparts.

In New York State, the ratio of women’s to men’s earnings has ranged from a low of 78.5% in 2000 to a high of 86.8% in 2010, and women in New York State have consistently come closer to making what their male peers do than women nationally. But the Green Mountain State bests everyone: Vermont had the highest female-to-male earnings ratio in 2014 (91.3%). Wyoming had the lowest (68.6%).

Differences may in part reflect variation in the occupations and industries found in each state as well as differing age composition, educational attainment and experience levels of the labor force, the bureau noted.

Earlier this month, the bureau released national figures indicating how women fared by occupation.

The macho construction and extraction occupations came closest to parity, with women earning 91.3% ($719) of the weekly median wages of their male counterparts. Office and administrative support and food preparation and food service also topped 90%, though these occupations were also on the less-lucrative end.

The only occupation in which women made more than men, said Bruce Bergman, senior economist for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was the occupation of “stock clerk and order fillers.” Those women workers made 102% of what men made, but the wages weren’t great: $514 a week, only $10 more than the $504 weekly salaries of their male counterparts.

Of particular interest to NYC, the home of Wall Street, were the poor showings for women in the financial services sector: Women with jobs in finance and insurance make only 60.2% of what men do in that industry, said Bergman, adding that even in the occupation of “personal financial advisers” women made 61.3% of their male counterparts’ median weekly earnings.

Adjusted for inflation, the wages of white women have risen 31% overall between 1979 and 2014, Bergman said. Black women saw gains of 19%, and the salaries of Hispanic women rose 15%. But the wages for black men and white men have stayed largely flat, and the wages of Hispanic men slumped 8%, Berman said.