The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: wage gap
Wage Gap Between Black And White Americans Is At 40-Year High

Wage Gap Between Black And White Americans Is At 40-Year High

A new report from the Economic Policy Institute reveals a stark disparity between the hourly pay of blacks and whites; on average, whites make 26.7 percent more than blacks, earning $25.22 an hour compared with $18.49 for blacks. Amazingly, blacks today earn less relative to their white counterparts than they did in 1979.

“The finding that stands out the most, our major result, is that the racial wage gaps were larger in 2015 than they were in 1979. That’s huge because the impression people have, in general, is we know there’s still racism in this country, but we think or at least believe that it’s getting better,” Valerie Wilson, director of EPI’s program on race, ethnicity and the economy, told the Guardian.

According to EPI, the driving force behind the pay gap is “discrimination… and growing earnings inequality in general.”

“Race is not a skill or characteristic that should have any market value as it relates to your wages, but it does,” Wilson said.

According to the report, wage inequalities build up over time, which explains why black male college graduates “started the 1980s with less than 10 percent disadvantage relative to white male college graduates, but by 2014 similarly educated new entrants were at a roughly 18 percent disadvantage.”

Wilson also noted factors like the mass incarceration rates for black men and women in the 1980s and ’90s and barriers to hiring for black individuals in general also contribute to the pay disparity. Studies show people with black-sounding names are less likely to be hired than those with white-sounding names.

No doubt the group facing the most discrimination in the workforce is black women. While the gender wage gap for white women shrunk in the 1990s, the pay gap for black women remained largely the same.

“Black women are faced with both kinds of discrimination,” Wilson said. “And that racial disadvantage has basically limited their achievements in narrowing the gender gap.”

Elizabeth Preza is an AlterNet staff writer focusing on politics, media and cultural criticism. Follow her on Twitter @lizacisms.

Photo: Cars travel north towards Los Angeles on interstate highway 5 in San Diego, California February 10, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake 

Pennsylvania Company Fights Wage Gap By Charging Women What They Earn

Pennsylvania Company Fights Wage Gap By Charging Women What They Earn

Yesterday was National Equal Pay Day. And it was yesterday in Pittsburgh that a striking event took place to bring awareness to the wage gap between men and women. Less Than 100, otherwise known as <100, set up the 76<100 pop-up shop, which will be selling goods through April at a lower price for women or those who identify as female.

Established by graphic designer and Gratuitous Type art director Elana Schlenker, and supported by Planned Parenthood, among others, the organization is a grassroots project that seeks to rectify pay inequality across the nation. <100 dramatically addresses the wage gap by providing a discount for women. The specific rate depends on the locale. For instance, at the initial Pittsburgh shop, women pay 76 cents to the dollar, while men pay the full buck. As the project moves across the country, future pop-ups will be priced according to the state’s median wage gap, as none of the states have an average salary that is equal between the sexes.

“Even though the shop is based on a negative statistic, I wanted it to be a positive space,” says Schlenker.

The organization is not-for-profit, with most of the proceeds going directly to the artists and makers whose goods are purchased in their shop. (Five percent of the total revenue goes to shop upkeep.) <100 participants describe themselves as purveyors of art prints, stationery, publications, textiles, ceramics, and “other exceptional goods created by women artists and makers from across the U.S.”

BuzzFeed reports that Schlenker wants “to try to get a number of permanent businesses involved in this pricing structure,” and hosts free events such as Negation Workshops and other activities with participating artists in order to engage local leaders and women-run businesses.

The <100 strategy joins a surge of similarly progressive, attention-grabbing projects. It is a sister movement to “Fight for $15,” which argues for a higher living wage for workers, as well as the “No Catcall Zones” initiative, which earlier this week distributed posters in Manhattan and Brooklyn that were designed by Feminist Apparel to protest street harassment.

In the fall, <100 will be heading to New Orleans, where the wage gap is 66 cents to $1.00 — much worse than the national average of a 22 percent disparity between the salaries of women and men.

Photo: Elana Schlenker via Facebook

Poverty Rate Slips, But Median Income Remains Flat

Poverty Rate Slips, But Median Income Remains Flat

By Jim Puzzanghera and Don Lee, Los Angeles Times

The nation’s poverty rate dropped last year for the first time since 2006, but the typical household income barely budged in a sign of the continuing sluggish economic recovery from the Great Recession, the Census Bureau said Tuesday.

The decline in the poverty rate to 14.5 percent of the population from 15 percent in 2012 was driven by an increase in people with full-time jobs last year, Census officials said.

The number of people working full time rose by about 6.4 million to 105.8 million last year. The increase included nearly a million households with children under 18 years old.

That rise helped lead to the first drop in more than a decade in the child poverty rate, which fell to 19.9 percent last year from 21.8 percent, the Census Bureau said.

The last time the child poverty rate dropped was in 2000.

“We are seeing that the economy is certainly having an impact on that group,” said Chuck Nelson, a division chief at the Census Bureau.

But the news was not all good.

Despite the decrease, the poverty rate last year remained two percentage points higher than in 2007, before the Great Recession started.

And because of population growth, the number of people living in poverty did not improve significantly for the third straight year.

There were 45.3 million people living below the poverty threshold, which last year was an annual income of less than $23,624 for a household with four people, including two related children.

In 2012, about 46.5 million people were living below the poverty line.

Median household income last year rose to $51,939, up only slightly from $51,759 the previous year. It was the second year median income was roughly flat after two straight declines, the Census Bureau said.

Adjusted for inflation, median household income was 8 percent lower than it was in 2007.

Latinos were the only ethnic group to experience a significant increase in median household income last year. Their median income rose 3.5 percent to $40,963, the Census Bureau said.

With lower-earning families seeing significant gains, the disparity between the highest-income and lowest-income households showed no significant change from 2012 to 2013.

But the gap, which has been widening in recent decades, remains substantial.

The top 5 percent of households last year garnered more than 22 percent of all income in the country, and the top 20 percent accounted for more than half of all the money earned. The share of income that went to the bottom 60 percent of households was just 26 percent.

By age group, the Census figures show there were significant income gains only for the youngest and oldest households.

Income for households headed by 15-to-24-year-olds jumped 10.5 percent in 2013 from the prior year, reflecting the increase in young people getting full-time jobs. In homes of those 65 and older, income went up 3.7 percent, helped by inflation adjustments in social security payments.

The wage gap between men and women showed no change. Women on average had an income of $39,200 last year compared with $50,000 for men — meaning they earned 78 percent of what men earned.

“That means that millions of women and their families continue to slide backwards year after year,” said Fatima Goss Graves, vice president for education and employment at the National Women’s Law Center. ” We can and must do better than this. It’s time to close the wage gap now.”

The annual report also included data on health insurance coverage. The Census Bureau found that 13.4 percent of Americans did not have coverage for the entire year.

The Census Bureau said it made changes in the way it calculated that figure as it prepared to gauge the effect of coverage that began this year under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Under the previous methodology, the percentage of people without health insurance had dropped to 15.4 percent in 2012. But Census officials said the 2013 figure should not be compared to the 2012 one.

The nation’s high poverty rate has been a key argument for advocates of increasing the federal minimum wage from its current $7.25 an hour.

About 17 percent of restaurant workers live below the poverty line, according to a report last month by the Economic Policy Institute. Fast-food workers have held protests in Los Angeles and other cities urging a higher minimum wage.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has said increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would lift 900,000 people above the poverty line.

AFP Photo/Scott Olson

Interested in economic news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!

Chart: Wage Inequality Has Dramatically Increased Over Past Three Decades

Chart: Wage Inequality Has Dramatically Increased Over Past Three Decades

A new report from the Economic Policy Institute, released Tuesday, highlights the increasingly prevalent and disparate effects of wage inequality. With a focus on same-gender wage gaps, the report demonstrates that income inequality affects all Americans, and reminds us that the implications and scope of the widening wage gap are not limited only to the poorest citizens.

The EPI notes that “since the late 1980s . . . the top has pulled away from everyone else.” As the nation’s wealthiest continued to make more money at the turn of the century, the wages of middle- and lower-class Americans remained relatively stagnant — effectively resulting in a decrease when adjusted to meet higher inflation rates — or increased at a rate slower than that by which the wages of the upper class grew.

According to the EPI, in 1979, the wages of those in the top 95th percentile were 2.2 times higher than the wages of the “typical worker,” or those considered “middle-wage earners,” at the 50th percentile. This “95/50 gap” applied to both men and women.

Over time, however, the disparity has widened.

As shown in the chart below, by 1999, men in the 95th percentile were making 2.7 times more than men in the 50th percentile. The same gap existed among women. Ten years later, in 2009, the wage gap among men had dramatically widened: The top earners were making 3.1 times more than middle-wage earners. The wage gap among women also grew wider, but not as dramatically. The top female earners made 2.8 times more than their middle-wage counterparts.

By 2013, the typical 95th percentile man’s wage was 3.3 times higher than the typical 50th percentile man’s. The same year, the typical 95th percentile woman’s wage was three times higher than the average 50th percentile woman’s wage.

The EPI’s most obvious finding is that inequality is increasing at a quicker pace among male earners than it is among female earners. But other concerns arise from the data. If men and women are disproportionately impacted by income inequality, can one assume that income inequality facilitates more general, societal inequality? Is it possible that the slower rate of income inequality experienced by women is a result of female earners making less than their male counterparts? The notion is alarming because it would prove a direct correlation between the gender pay gap, income inequality and the other forms of inequality that result directly from income inequality.

Today, the data at least prove one thing: The wage gap is widening, and both men and women are feeling it — including those who are in a better position than the nation’s lowest-wage earners.

“The enormous increase in inequality among both men and women over the last 35 years is a testament to the fact that skewed wage growth has become a core economic challenge of our time,” writes economist Heidi Shierholz in the EPI report.

High-wage inequality is, as Shierholz states, the “key wedge between a successful economy … and an unsuccessful economy,” and it is also one of the greatest threats to America’s middle class.

Photo: Brad_crooks via Flickr
Chart via Economic Policy Institute
Interested in the economy? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!