Black Women’s Equal Pay Day Fell on August 3—What Does That Mean?

From the Economic Policy Institute (http://www.epi.org/):

Black Women’s Equal Pay Day—the day that marks approximately how far into the next year Black women need to work to earn pay equal to what a white man made in the previous year—fell on August 3 this year.

In the wake of COVID-19, what does that really mean for Black women workers in the United States?

As explained in a recent blog post, the pandemic’s effect on wage inequality is challenging to interpret based on the 2020 data because COVID-related job losses heavily impacted low-wage jobs and data on hourly wages skewed higher in 2020. And these lost low-wage jobs were concentrated in leisure, hospitality, education, and health services—industries that employ a disproportionate share of women. Therefore, the pandemic’s effect on pay equity during 2020 was less about a relative difference in dollars per hour and more about a disproportionate share of women—and Black women in particular—becoming unemployed. Nearly one in five Black women (18.3%) lost their jobs between February 2020 and April 2020, compared with 13.2% of white men.

Curious how hourly wages are stacking up for Black women in jobs that are critical to the COVID-9 recovery?

• Physicians and surgeons: Non-Hispanic white men earn about $63/hour, while Black women in these positions take home only $47/hour.
• Registered nurses: White men earn almost $35/hour, while Black women earn almost $29/hour.
• Elementary and middle school teachers: Black women teachers are paid about $27/hour, compared to about $34/hour for their white male colleagues.
• Child care workers: White men in these jobs are paid about $15/hour and Black women are paid about $13/hour.
• Service jobs: White men working wait staff jobs make about $1 more per hour than Black women in these jobs ($10.51 vs. $9.39), and white men working as cashiers make approximately $2 more per hour than Black women holding similar positions ($12.91 vs. $10.82).

What does this tell us? The Black gender pay gap persists, even among essential, frontline workers who are helping get us to the other side of this public health and economic crisis.