Salary gap between women and men in the United States is a fact. According to recent data from the American Community Survey, some cities in the U.S. are experiencing the opposite to what’s normally found: female salary is higher than men’s. These females work full-time and earn a higher median income than men, which means an advance in gender equality in the work environment.
It’s true that the SSA (Social Security Administration) offers many benefits to American citizens, but it is time women have their own salary and one that allows them to be independent. So, let’s see what is happening with this salary gap.
Women earning more than men
It is commonly known that men earn more than women for doing the same job or carry out similar roles, this is the global tendency in the labor market in the U.S. However, the opposite is happening in 40 cities in the United States, where women have a higher salary than men – at least when it comes to full-time workers’ media salary.
Some data to picture this situation
According to the American Community Survey (ACS), this is a survey done by the U.S. Census Bureau. Here, we can find detailed information about income, jobs, education and other aspects about the U.S. population which was analyzed by the financial website called GOBankingRates.
This website is known for being specialized in money and personal economy issues. What GORankingRates did was to compare the median income of men and women workers in different cities of the United States, and they made a list with all those cities where women had a higher salary than men.
Median salary vs. average salary
The analysis was based on the median income because it is considered to be the fairest measure to compare salaries between women and men. So what is the difference between median income and average income? Let’s find out with examples:
- Median salary: imagine 5 people earning each a different salary ($20,000, $23,000, $30,000, $40,000, $100,000), to find the median you need to put the salaries in order and take the one in the middle, in this case $30,000. This means half of the people earn less and another half more than $30,000.
- Average salary: to calculate this, you need to add all the salaries. Let’s use the same salaries as before ($20,000 + $23,000 + $30,000 + $40,000 + $100,000) and you divide the result by 5. So, the average salary would be $42,600 which means most people earn less than that.
Basically, the median shows what a typical person earns whereas the average is higher if a few people earn much more than the rest.
Where do women earn more than men?
So, having in mind the analysis only used people who worked on full-time, these are the top 3 cities in the U.S. where women earn more than men:
- Jacksonville, North Carolina: it has the highest salary gap in favor of women, they earn 20.55% more than men. Females’ media salary is $32,768 and men’s $27,181.
- Sun City, Arizona: here, females earn 19.61% more than men, being the median salary for females of $58,109 and for men $48,582.
- Chamblee, Georgia: the salary gap is 18.95% in favor of women, they earn $58,590 of median salary and men $49,256.
This doesn’t mean the gender pay gap has disappeared, nor do women earn more than men in the entire country. That is far from being the case, what it means is that there are some specific places where women earn more than men, which may be because of the type of industry, the demographic composition or the level of education.