The good news? New York State — along with Delaware — boasts the smallest gender wage gap in the U.S: A woman here or in Delaware makes an average of 89 cents for every dollar made by a male colleague.
The bad news? The gap for Black and Latina women in New York is much worse (66 cents on the dollar for Black women and 56 cents for Latinas). And collectively, women working full time in New York State lose a combined total of $54 billion a year due to the gender pay gap.
The numbers, crunched by the National Partnership for Women and Families in partnership with LeanIn.org using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, showed the disparity is emphatically worse in states such as Wyoming (which has a 36 percent gap), Utah and West Virginia (29 percent).
April 4 is “Equal Pay Day” and the organizations are hoping to draw attention to the inequities in compensation and give a boost to the Paycheck Fairness Act, which members of Congress were expected to reintroduce Tuesday. Other changes that would help bring about equal pay would be strengthened protections for pregnant workers, guaranteed paid sick days and the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, which would guarantee comprehensive paid family and medical leave.
In New York, median annual pay for a woman who holds a full-time, year-round job is $46,208 while median annual pay for a man who holds a full-time, year-round job is $52,124. That comes out to a wage gap of $5,916 — enough for a woman to buy one more year of food, three more months of mortgage and utilities payments, five more months of rent or six additional months of child care, according to the Partnership.
Women in the NYC metropolitan area receive 87 cents for every dollar a man makes worse than Miami or Orlando, but better than most other metropolitan areas.
