Industries Where Women Still Earn Less Than Men (CHART)

The great recession may have left more American men unemployed then women, sparking cries of a "Mancession", but in 2009, women's median weekly wage was still only 80 percent of men's.

But all professions are not created equal when it comes to salary inequality, as a new chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics neatly lays out. (Hat tip to the NYT's Economix blog.)

Women in construction -- over five and a half hundred thousand (.01 percent of total women employed in 2009) -- made 92.2 percent of men's weekly salaries. While women in finance, who earned bigger weekly paycheck only earned 70.5 percent of their male counterparts' salaries.

See the Bureau of Labor Statistics chart below:

Comments

[Justine Johnson]

09:40 AM on 03/02/2011

Mancession.

[AcademicFreedom]

10:08 PM on 02/20/2011

women in porn earn much more than men in porn; ususally by a factor of 10 or more.

[mbarnett]

07:42 PM on 02/20/2011

Here is a simple logic question for everyone: If women do the same quality and quantity of work as men but do it for 20% less pay, why would anyone ever hire a man?

Think about it. Check your premises.

[Steven Whitehead]

03:51 PM on 02/19/2011

This graph is very problematic in the fact that it's a weekly average, not a wage average, I HIGHLY doubt that there is much of a pay gap as this graph is implying, it's just that men work longer weekly hours than women. A good friend of mine works as a nurse, he makes the same amount as women and on average he works 20 more hours a week than his female counterparts, dramatically increasings his median weekly earnings over females. If the graph was on a median hourly earnings, than it would probably be very very close to par.

[DFL]

02:38 PM on 02/19/2011

It's still mostly a man's world, everything around you was designed by men, built by men and is probably owned by men.

[Var Enyo]

10:41 AM on 02/19/2011

OMG, the republicans will have to make sure to cut the wages on women in industries where they are close. We can't have this! Should take care of itself though as they are forced to have more children after birth control becomes illegal.

[WonderfulElena]

08:15 AM on 02/19/2011

they forgot to mention a bunch of other professions where men make more--nfl, nba and mlb playing, construction worker, etc...

[Reardon Steel]

07:35 AM on 02/20/2011

Really? Did you actually read the article? Correct on NFL, NBA but not only is construction on the graph, it is explicitly mentioned in the story and, it has the lowest level of inequality listed.

[ForemostPanda]

08:07 AM on 02/19/2011

if you only use one variable, you're bound to get skewed results.

[Andreas Moser]

06:09 AM on 02/19/2011

Here is the REAL reason why women earn less than men: http://andreasmoser.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/gender-pay-gap/ They have different expectations in life, and the female preference for rich men forces men to earn more.

[multidoc]

12:46 PM on 02/19/2011

Has anyone called you stup*id yet, Andreas? Then let me be the first.

[Steven Whitehead]

03:43 PM on 02/19/2011

Good comment, it totally is that women have different aspersions in life. It's also a gap in the amount of risk that women take in their jobs, men take more risks in terms of their decisions, thus they are rewarded. Also men on average work longer hours per week than women. This graph is very problematic in the fact that it's a weekly average, not a wage average, I HIGHLY doubt that there is much of a pay gap as this graph is implying, it's just that men work more than women.

[madame48]

06:21 PM on 02/19/2011

hmmm I've worked for almost 50 years, raised my kids, did all the home chores....THAT was all work...when the men actually do half the work of having a home, just shut up about "working more"...If I had a wife who did all that too,maybe I could be a gazillionnaire

[LibertyRoy]

03:11 AM on 02/19/2011

In the porn industry, women now call most of the shots and make far more money than the men. Congrads.

[LibertyRoy]

03:05 AM on 02/19/2011

In total, women will always earn a little less than men because they lose critical career time to having kids. I also think that "mean" numbers might be skewed because at the very high end, women do not seem to have the pure thirst for leadership power men do. Want proof? How many female CEO's are there? Senators? Presidents? I reject this is because of any se.xism. I have no real problem with this discrepancy. I think as women gain due to girls increasingly superior school grades and lower numbers of children being born, this gap will continue to narrow, but never close 100%.

[Var Enyo]

10:39 AM on 02/19/2011

Gap should widen as the war on birth control continues then.

[Michael Morrison]

01:23 AM on 02/19/2011

Women deserve equal pay for equal work; however,

Few women are willing to work outdoors (construction), in jobs that require math and science skills (engineering), and in dangerous jobs.

These jobs command higher pay because fewer people are willing to do them.

My experience has been that the few women who get into these jobs command pay and respect equal to the men who enter them. Indeed, most men are delighted to have a woman or two willing to join them.

[Andie Marshall]

01:14 AM on 02/19/2011

People make excuses for disparate treatment, pointing to maternity, "leaving the workforce for years," (a gross exaggeration) and imagined educational differences. This is insulting to women and annoying to men. The economic importance to our communities of equal pay for equal work is both vital and fundamental. When employers rob women, they diminish us all, impoverishing our tax-base, and robbing our children.

Since1982, (29 years) US women have outpaced men in college graduation rates. In 2004, women received 58 percent of all bachelor's degrees, compared to only 35 percent in 1960.

The earnings of women with MBAs who took even nine months off after their children were born were still 17 percent lower 10 years later than those of employees with similar qualifications but no comparable gap in their employment record. It will be interesting to study the compensation rates of the 99ers by gender 3, 5 and 10 years from now.

US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2008: over 50% of women with a child under the age of one are in the workforce, CIA estimates 2010 average of 2 children per family.

Poorly designed parental leave policies actually reinforce tendencies toward gender
inequality. US maternity leave provisions rank the lowest among NATO. Mothers must return to work after 12 weeks or sooner following birth or adoption. Paternal needs largely ignored.

In a Harvard study of 168 nations, 163 countries had some type of paid maternity leave. The U.S. ranked last along with Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland.

[ecclesias]

11:27 PM on 02/18/2011

This has been true throughout my working career. Used to be certain jobs were off limits. Now you can get them but the pay is less. Anyone who doesn't think so is either very young or not really paying attention.

[LibertyRoy]

03:09 AM on 02/19/2011

Or does not really care. Very few women I know seem to care too much about this gap. Seriously, I have many and I do not see them wringing their hands over it like the 1970s.

[ecclesias]

09:04 PM on 02/23/2011

Hmm, I don't really understand your comment. It isn't like the 1970's anymore because many worked hard to change it. It's because we worked hard to change it that it did. But there are still problems as the research shows. Although much has improved, I know many women who are not happy with it today at all and I'm one of them. Maybe they don't tell you. I do know guys who treat it as if its a joke and they aren't the ones any woman would talk to about it. I hope you're not one of them.

[madame48]

06:24 PM on 02/19/2011

when I was a kid,bank tellers were all men, and the job supported a middleclass family...no more,wages started to fall as more women got the job.....

[ecclesias]

09:11 PM on 02/23/2011

I remember that, too. When my dad was in law school there was only one woman and most of the men ostracized her and wouldn't study with her. Really strange. He and another student and my mom befriended her. Hard to imagine that world but I remember that even in the 1980's when I was promoted to a "man's" job invariably in meetings, I would be asked to get coffee and serve it. Even by vendors who were dependent on my decision. And not all of them would backpedal even when they realized what had happened.