The Gender Wage Gap

U.S. full-time workers · BLS CPS Table A-39

The market has spoken.
It just didn't speak equally.

For every dollar a man took home in —, a woman doing the same work full-time earned this:

Source: BLS Public Data API · Table A-39 · Series LES1252882700 & LES1252881800 · Seasonally adjusted quarterly medians

Dig deeper. Search any occupation.

How this is calculated

The headline figures come directly from the BLS Public Data API. The summary stat uses median usual weekly earnings for full-time wage and salary workers, seasonally adjusted (series LES1252882700 for women, LES1252881800 for men). These are quarterly figures; we average available quarters for the most recent year with at least two valid data points.

Occupation-level data is pulled from BLS Table A-39 (published annually), which reports median weekly earnings and worker counts by occupation and sex. We fetch the structured XLSX file directly, which is more stable than the HTML version of the table.

What this measures: The ratio of women's median weekly pay to men's median weekly pay among full-time workers. It does not control for occupation, hours, experience, or industry. That is intentional. Controlling for those factors answers a different question. This answers: across the full-time workforce, what does a dollar of men's pay buy in women's pay?

Ratio     = women_median / men_median
Cents     = round(Ratio × 100)
Gap %     = (1 − Ratio) × 100

The Racial Wage Gap

Wage Gap / Race Data

Racial Wage Gap Tracker

Economic Disparity Report — United States

The Gap
Is Not
Closing.

Median earnings by race compared to White non-Hispanic workers. Data sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey and Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey.

Source Census ACS + BLS CPS

Survey year —

Baseline White (non-Hispanic)

01 — Current snapshot

White (non-Hispanic) — Baseline

—

median annual earnings

All other groups are expressed as cents earned for every dollar earned by a White non-Hispanic worker with earnings in the past 12 months. ACS 1-Year Estimates, workers 16+.

02 — Controlled vs. raw gap

03 — By occupation group

Methodology

Raw gap = unadjusted difference in median earnings. Controlled gap = portion unexplained after controlling for education, experience, occupation, and region (Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition). A controlled gap is evidence of discrimination — it's what remains when you remove every measurable difference.

Sources

U.S. Census Bureau ACS — Table B20017 (A–I), median earnings by sex and race, 16+.

BLS Current Population Survey — LEU series, median weekly earnings by race, full-time workers.

Decomposition: Wilson & Darity (2021), EPI analysis of CPS microdata.

Limitations

ACS 1-year estimates have higher margins of error for smaller populations (Native Hawaiian & Pacific Islander, American Indian & Alaska Native). BLS CPS race categories do not perfectly align with ACS categories. 2020 ACS 1-year data was not published due to COVID-19 collection disruption.