Pay gap for Washington women near highest in nation
Jan 31, 2013, 1:26 PM | Updated: 1:53 pm
Women are paid better in Washington than women in other parts of the country. But new statistics also show that the pay gap between men and women is greater in Washington than almost anywhere else. (AP Photo/file)
(AP Photo/file)
Women are paid better in Washington than women in other parts of the country. But new statistics also show that the pay gap between men and women is greater in Washington than almost anywhere else.
New statistics from 2011 show that women earn 74.5 percent of the median weekly earnings of men in Washington, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That ranks 48th out of 50 states. Nationwide, women earned 82.2 percent of what men earned.
The main reason is that men dominate the workforce in certain high paying jobs in Washington.
“There’s a much higher concentration of engineering and technical jobs in Washington state than there are in the rest of the country and furthermore there are many more men that work in these engineering fields than women,” said Amar Mann with the agency.
Adding to the pay gap is that a high percentage of women work in a lower paying job sector in Washington.
“Women are very well represented in the service occupations in the state of Washington,” said Mann. “Nearly one in four women works in one of these service jobs and what these primarily consist of are jobs such as medical support, medical assistance and a lot of the community service jobs.”
On a brighter note, Mann points out that Washington women’s weekly earnings rank 12th in the nation, likely in part to the state’s highest-in-the-nation minimum wage.
