Pennsylvania Women Stop Closing Wage Gap on Men

New report finds that since 2003, women in PA workforce have watched wages fall

More bad economic news—this time for the 47 percent of the Pennsylvania workforce that is female.

According to a new report from the Keystone Research Center (KRC), the slow-but-steady progress made by Pennsylvania women workers between the late 1970s and the early 1990s—progress in wiping out the so-called “gender wage gap”—has come to a grinding halt.

Since 2003, says KRC’s The State of Women in the Pennsylvania Workforce 2008, women workers have actually lost ground to men, with the 2007 wage gap remaining at almost $4 per hour. Typical Pennsylvania women, the study reports, now earn $13.20 per hour compared to the $17 per hour made by their male counterparts.

Also since 2003, Pennsylvania women have seen their inflation-adjusted median hourly wage fall by about 50 cents per hour.

“Over the past three decades, one positive sign amidst mostly bad economic news for Pennsylvania’s middle class has been the progress of women in the workforce,” said KRC labor economist Mark Price, PhD, who researched and wrote the new report. “But in the current decade, despite a so-called economic expansion between 2001 and 2007, the progress of women in the Pennsylvania workforce stopped. That era of catching up to and closing in on equity with men is truly over.”

At the end of the 1970s, Price noted, typical Pennsylvania women workers earned 61 cents for every dollar earned by typical Pennsylvania men. Now, women workers in the state earn 78 cents on the dollar. But most of that gain took place between 1979 and the early 1990s, Price said, and none of it since 2003.

Another reflection of the gap is the share of Commonwealth women who are low-income, the report shows.  Three out of every 10 Pennsylvania women are low-income, compared to just over two in 10 Pennsylvania men.

In a finding that may surprise some because it goes against conventional wisdom, the KRC report shows that the gender wage gap is not primarily the result of education gaps.

As recently as the 1970s, the report notes, men in Pennsylvania had substantially higher education levels than women. But by 2007 the share of Pennsylvania working-age women with a college degree surpassed the same share for Pennsylvania working-age men. A larger share of Pennsylvania women than men also have a high-school degree.

As well as statewide information, the KRC report contains detailed information on the status of women in the workforce within 40 Pennsylvania regions. The data show that women fare better—measured, for example, by earnings, in the female share of managerial or professional jobs, and education levels—in the state’s larger metropolitan areas. Women in counties in the Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton metropolitan areas, for example, do better than those in more rural counties. To see how working Pennsylvania women fare in individual regions of the state, visit www.keystoneresearch.org.

If education is not the main reason for the wage gap, what is? Price says women earn less than men partly because of occupational segregation—women are over-represented in certain lower-paying professions, including caregiving.

Nine out of every 10 child-care workers, nearly 80 percent of wait staff, and three out of four cashiers are women, Price pointed out.

These jobs pay poorly not because they are “unskilled” or involve unimportant work, he continued, but because of institutional factors—the number of jobs in small businesses and workplaces, the lack of policies that lift wages even when services are publicly funded (e.g., in health care), and low unionization rates. 

Despite increasing numbers of women entering professions such as law and medicine, Price added, women also earn less than men because they are under-represented in the highest-paying jobs, especially within management.

“There’s still something of a glass ceiling in upper management,” Price said, “within which a different set of non-market factors are at play—the old boys’ network.” Whereas women make up more than half of the poorest third of managerial occupations (paying below about $50,000 per year), they make up only 15 percent of the highest paid one-tenth, which pay more than $170,000.

The experience documented in the new KRC report is not unique to Pennsylvania, Price explained, but mirrors national trends. In 2007, U.S. women earned 81 percent of what men do compared to 78 percent in Pennsylvania.

Price said eliminating the gender wage gap requires the same public policies that would help all Pennsylvania workers.

“We’re talking about measures that the Keystone Research Center has been recommending for years,” Price said, “steps outlined most recently in our State of Working Pennsylvania 2008 report and a draft speech that we encouraged the presidential candidates to borrow from on the stump in the Keystone State.” (Both of these sources can be found at www.keystoneresearch.org.)

Those steps, Price said, include increasing the minimum wage to lift wage levels at the low end of the labor market, strengthening career paths for low-wage women and other workers, and strengthening workers’ rights to choose union representation.

“Recent events have made the need for these measures clearer than ever,” Price concluded, “to bolster the middle class and achieve steady growth of consumption that doesn’t depend on unsustainable debt.”

For more information on The State of Women in the Pennsylvania Workforce 2008, The State of Working Pennsylvania 2008, and other KRC studies on housing, wages, and other economic issues, visit www.keystoneresearch.org.

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