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The gender gap in pay has slightly narrowed in the United States over the past 20 years or so. In 2024, women earned an average of 85% of what men earned, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of median hourly earnings of both full- and part-time workers. In 2003, women earned 81% as much as men.

As has long been the case, the wage gap is smaller for workers ages 25 to 34 than for all workers 16 and older. In 2024, women 25 to 34 earned an average of 95 cents for every dollar earned by a man in the same age group - a 5-cent gap. By comparison, the gender pay gap among workers of all ages that year was 15 cents.

How we did this

The gender pay gap measures the difference in median hourly earnings between men and women who work full or part time in the United States. Pew Research Center's estimate of the pay gap is based on an analysis of Current Population Survey (CPS) monthly outgoing rotation group files ( IPUMS) from January 1982 to December 2024, combined to create annual files. To understand how we calculate the gender pay gap, read our 2013 post, "How Pew Research Center measured the gender pay gap."

In addition to findings about the gender wage gap, this analysis includes information from a Pew Research Center survey about the perceived reasons for the pay gap, as well as the pressures and career goals of U.S. men and women. The survey was conducted among 5,098 adults and includes a subset of questions asked only for 2,048 adults who are employed part time or full time, from Oct. 10-16, 2022.

Everyone who took part in the survey is a member of the Center's American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP's methodology.

Here are the questions used in this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology.

While the gender pay gap has not changed a lot since 2003, it has narrowed considerably when looking at the longer term, both among all workers 16 and older and among those 25 to 34. The estimated 15-cent gender pay gap among all workers in 2024 was down from 35 cents in 1982. And the 5-cent gap among workers ages 25 to 34 in 2024 was down from a 26-cent gap.

The U.S. Census Bureau has also analyzed the gender pay gap, though its analysis looks only at full-time workers (as opposed to full- and part-time workers). In 2023, full-time, year-round working women earned 83% of what their male counterparts earned, according to the Census Bureau's most recent analysis.

Much of the gender pay gap has been explained by measurable factors such as educational attainment, occupational segregation and work experience. The narrowing of the gap over the long term is attributable in large part to gains women have made in each of these dimensions.

Even though women have increased their presence in higher-paying jobs traditionally dominated by men, such as professional and managerial positions, women as a whole continue to be overrepresented in lower-paying occupations relative to their share of the workforce. This may contribute to gender differences in pay.

Other factors that are difficult to measure, including gender discrimination, may also contribute to the ongoing wage discrepancy.

Perceived reasons for the gender wage gap

When asked about the factors that may play a role in the gender wage gap, half of U.S. adults point to women being treated differently by employers as a major reason, according to an October 2022 Pew Research Center survey. Smaller shares point to women making different choices about how to balance work and family (42%) and working in jobs that pay less (34%).

There are some notable differences between men and women in views of what's behind the gender wage gap. Women are much more likely than men (61% vs. 37%) to say a major reason for the gap is that employers treat women differently. And while 45% of women say a major factor is that women make different choices about how to balance work and family, men are slightly less likely to hold that view (40% say this).

Parents with children younger than 18 in the household are more likely than those who don't have young kids at home (48% vs. 40%) to say a major reason for the pay gap is the choices that women make about how to balance family and work. On this question, differences by parental status are evident among both men and women.

Views about reasons for the gender wage gap also differ by party.

About two-thirds of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (68%) say a major factor behind wage differences is that employers treat women differently, but far fewer Republicans and Republican leaners (30%) say the same.

Conversely, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say women's choices about how to balance family and work (50% vs. 36%) and their tendency to work in jobs that pay less (39% vs. 30%) are major reasons why women earn less than men.

Democratic and Republican women are more likely than their male counterparts in each party to say a major reason for the gender wage gap is that employers treat women differently. About three-quarters of Democratic women (76%) say this, compared with 59% of Democratic men.

And while 43% of Republican women say unequal treatment by employers is a major reason for the gender wage gap, just 18% of GOP men share that view.

Pressures facing working women and men

Family caregiving responsibilities bring different pressures for working women and men, and research has shown that being a mother can reduce women's earnings, while fatherhood can increase men's earnings.

Employed women and men are about equally likely to say they feel a great deal of pressure to support their family financially and to be successful in their jobs and careers, according to the Center's October survey. But women, and particularly working mothers, are more likely than men to say they feel a great deal of pressure to focus on responsibilities at home.

About half of employed women (48%) report feeling a great deal of pressure to focus on their responsibilities at home, compared with 35% of employed men. Among working mothers with children younger than 18 in the household, two-thirds (67%) say the same, compared with 45% of working dads.

When it comes to supporting their family financially, similar shares of working moms and dads (57% vs. 62%) report they feel a great deal of pressure, but this is driven mainly by the large share of unmarried working mothers who say they feel a great deal of pressure in this regard (77%).

Among those who are married, working dads are far more likely than working moms (60% vs. 43%) to say they feel a great deal of pressure to support their family financially. (There were not enough unmarried working fathers in the sample to analyze separately.)

About four-in-ten working parents say they feel a great deal of pressure to be successful at their job or career. These findings don't differ by gender.

Gender differences in job roles, aspirations

Overall, a quarter of employed U.S. adults say they are currently the boss or one of the top managers where they work, according to the Center's survey. Another 33% say they are not currently the boss but would like to be in the future, while 41% are not and do not aspire to be the boss or one of the top managers.

Men are more likely than women to be a boss or a top manager where they work (28% vs. 21%). This is especially the case among employed fathers, 35% of whom say they are the boss or one of the top managers where they work. (The varying attitudes between fathers and men without children at least partly reflect differences in marital status and educational attainment between the two groups.)

In addition to being less likely than men to say they are currently the boss or a top manager at work, women are also more likely to say they wouldn't want to be in this type of position in the future. More than four-in-ten employed women (46%) say this, compared with 37% of men. Similar shares of men (35%) and women (31%) say they are not currently the boss but would like to be one day. These patterns are similar among parents.
Note: This is an update of a post published on March 22, 2019. Anna Brown, a research methodologist, and Amanda Barroso, a former writer and editor, contributed to an earlier version of this analysis. Here are the questions used in this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology.

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Gender pay gap in U.S. has narrowed slightly over 2 decades

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In 2024, women earned an average of 85% of what men earned, according to an analysis of median hourly earnings of both full- and part-time workers.

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Workforce participation for moms in the U.S. has been dropping for most of this year, and the reasons are more complicated than return-to-office mandates. The team from "The Indicator" explains why.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

We've been talking today about the job market. It's in a kind of holding pattern. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, job growth has been slowing down, but people are not necessarily leaving the workforce. We're talking here about workforce participation. That changes from time to time. And some groups are slipping out in greater numbers than others. Our colleagues from The Indicator, Darian Woods and Wailin Wong, explain why moms are scaling back on their work lives.

DARIAN WOODS, BYLINE: Nicole Damstetter lives in Orlando, Florida, with her husband, their 4-year-old daughter, two dogs, a cat and five chickens.

WAILIN WONG, BYLINE: You've got your own eggs, right?

NICOLE DAMSTETTER: Yes.

WONG: So you're, like, making money in this economy (laughter).

DAMSTETTER: It's great, it's great. I use them to barter with the neighbors.

WONG: (Laughter)

WOODS: Nicole spent roughly the last decade in the tech sector helping nonprofit organizations use software. And she says she had always defined herself by her job. But that began to change when her daughter started part-time preschool.

DAMSTETTER: She was really coming alive and getting this personality being at preschool. And then I started to think ahead and realized I've only got a little time left before she starts kindergarten. And I really reflected that I wanted to be home with my daughter.

WONG: Nicole quit her job in April, and she wasn't the only mom who left their job this year. In the first half of 2025, the percentage of moms in the labor force fell from around 70% to 67%.

WOODS: These numbers come from economist Misty Heggeness. She's a professor at the University of Kansas and the author of a forthcoming book called "Swiftynomics: How Women Mastermind And Redefine Our Economy."

MISTY HEGGENESS: What we're seeing now is, you know, a couple of years out from the pandemic, some of the larger employers in the federal government have really pushed on this idea of return to office. And I think it's had an unintended consequence on caregivers' ability to work, and we see that in the data.

WONG: In other cases, even when employers are flexible, it still doesn't work out. That was what happened with Ivy Abid. Her background is in science education, and she had been working full-time at Chicago Public Schools organizing career fairs and helping high school students get internships. Ivy is also a mom to a 2-year-old daughter.

IVY ABID: And she's wonderful and the light of my life.

WOODS: Ivy's daughter has a condition that required a lot of hospital stays during the first year of her life. Things stabilized after a recent surgery, but Ivy's mother also started having memory problems. Ivy and her husband moved her mother from Alaska to Chicago.

WONG: Ivy and her supervisors tried to work out a part-time arrangement, but she needed even more flexibility than what her school could offer. So she traded her full-time job for a part-time role teaching biology at a community college.

WOODS: Ivy says she's happy with her new work-life balance. She's gotten to spend more time with her daughter and her mother. She's even found time for hobbies like bike riding. The downside is the hit to her income.

ABID: I'm doing the same kind of work that would be earning $45 or $50 an hour if I were a full-time employee. But as a part-time employee, in order to get that flexibility, I have to get paid half as much.

WOODS: A common thread in the stories we heard is that some moms are rethinking their relationship with work.

WONG: These conversations are what economist Misty Heggeness said should be happening among employers and policymakers. She hopes those conversations will lead to efforts on affordable child care and workplace flexibility. And that, she says, will help keep moms in the workforce.

WOODS: Darian Woods.

WONG: Wailin Wong, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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This article presents various statistics relating to the gender pay gap, reasons as to why the gap exists, and the various pressures and desires when it comes to the workplace.

Key Takeaways

1. While the gender pay gap exists, it has gone down slowly over time amongst employed women.

2. Many women either feel a pressure to focus on family responsibilities or pass up opportunities to be managers in the workplace.

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1. Women who have acquired degrees in higher education are more likely to face discrimination than those without.

2. Around forty-two percent of women in the workplace have faced one of eight types of gender discrimination.

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1. It is stated gender parity could increase global GDP by twenty percent.

2. Women in STEM careers only make up 28% of that industry, despite pushes for women to pursue STEM fields.

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2. Other mothers may be forced to lessen or quit work duties so that they can take care of their children.

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2. For federal law, you should report harassment 300 days after the event took place, and document as much as you can to help build your case.

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1. Women who seek out a field that is competitive and inclusive tend to have more success.

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I chose to collect all of these articles with the broad theme of Women in Business due to my intended major being Business Administration. I will likely face some of these factors head-on as I grow older.