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Source: BLS CPS Table A-39 (annual averages). Values are median weekly earnings.
Methodology & why this beats the headline stat

What we weight: For each occupation, we take the median weekly pay for men and women and multiply by the number of men and women in that occupation. Then we sum across occupations and compare totals.

MenPayroll   = Σ(M_i × Nᵐ_i)
WomenPayroll = Σ(W_i × Nʷ_i)
Ratio        = WomenPayroll / MenPayroll
Gap%         = (1 − Ratio) × 100

Why weight? Because a tiny niche job shouldn’t count as much as a job millions of people do. Headcount weighting reflects where people actually work and avoids the “average of ratios” problem.

How it differs from BLS’s headline: BLS’s national figure is the pooled median across all full-time workers. Our figure is a composition-aware estimate built from occupational medians and headcounts. It won’t equal a pooled median, but it’s more honest about the mix of jobs.

Limits: Using medians as stand-ins ignores within-occupation spread; we also exclude rows with missing medians. Still, this is a better “who works where” picture than a single pooled median.