Pay Inequity Shows No Signs of Waning

At many of the nation’s biggest companies, the wage gap between white men and nearly everyone else in the workplace still exists, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau analysis.

In fact, it was only with Asian-American men, where median wages were just one percent less than those of white men who worked full-time, that the wage gap was nearly obliterated.

Everywhere else, wage gaps were not only apparent, but in many cases, substantial. By race, Hispanic women were found to earn 52 percent of the annual pay of white men in the same roles, black women earned 63 percent, white women earned 73 percent and Asian-American women earned 78 percent.

Young women earned 20 to 25 percent less than young men at the same education level–about equal to men at an education level below theirs.

Meanwhile, white men still wielded the most power in business, making up 81.6 percent of the work force and 83.5 percent of the managers. Men of color held only 6.4 percent of corporate officer positions at 260 big companies.

“It’s disheartening because the rate of progress toward equality that we saw in the 1970s and 1980s has slowed in recent years,” Heidi Hartmann, president and economist at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, told the Journal. “At the current rate, equal pay will take another 50 years.”