Women Gain in Job Market, Lag on Pay, White House Report Says

[OhioChick]

Source: Bloomberg

Mar 1, 2011 11:54 AM ET

Women in the U.S. attend college at the same rate as men and the number of women in the workforce is almost equal, yet gains in education and employment over the last several decades haven’t translated into income equality, according to a government report released today.

The White House report is aimed at showing how women’s lives have changed since the last comprehensive federal report on women in 1963, administration officials said. It covers health, crime and violence as well as economic issues.

“By consolidating our data so that we can learn more about how services and programs are impacting lives, we can target our resources to deliver the best results for women, families, and all Americans,” Jacob Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said in a statement.

Among the findings in the 97-page report: The rate of adult women working or looking for work rose from about 33 percent in 1950 to 61 percent in 1999 and has held steady over the last 12 years. At all levels of education, women earned 75 percent of what their male counterparts earned in 2009, it said.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-01/women-gain-in-job-market-lag-on-pay-white-house-report-says.html

[williesgirl]

1. And will they fucking do anything about pay inequality, fuck no!

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. The bloomberg article is bullshit.

It is inaccurate. The underlying WH report is much better.

To have a holistic view of the issues facing citizens, the White House should create a "Council on Men and Boys" to create a similar report from that perspective.

When you dig around the report a little bit, you catch inferrences of how bad the employment situation (for instance) is for men. The labor force participation rate (people either working or looking for work) is 61% for women and 75% for men, however, roughly equal numbers of men and women are actually employed. This suggests that - at an absolute minimum - 23% of men in the workforce are unemployed.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/Women_in_America.pdf

[spooky3]

3. factually wrong on at least two points

1) Since the labor force participation rate includes both employed and unemployed but looking for work, by looking at that statistic alone, you know nothing about what % of men or women are unemployed.

2) In fact, as of 2008, the most recent data I found on the BLS site:

http://www.dol.gov/wb/factsheets/Qf-ESWM08.htm

the numbers of men and women employed are NOT "roughly equal."

The numbers are:

67,876,000 women were employed as compared with 77,486,000 men; 3,196,000 women were unemployed compared with 5,033,000 unemployed men.

And, as the whitehouse.gov report you liked indicated, the primary reason why men's unemployment has increased more than women's during the recession is that they are much more likely to be employed in occupations and industries that are sensitive to business cycles, e.g., construction. People who don't want this factor accounted for then should be equally comfortable with ignoring factors that partially account for the pay gap, e.g., industry.

This info also implies that, as the recovery continues, men will see a greater employment increase than will women.

These statistics also don't account for the number of underemployed, e.g., people who are working but only part time, but would prefer to work full time. Since a larger proportion of part time workers are women, looking only at numbers employed vs. not employed isn't a complete picture.

Etc., etc.

[lumberjack_jeff]

4. I'm not wrong. There's a lot of water under the bridge since 2008.

women surpass men in employment

Last February, there are 64.2 million employed women, and 63.4 million employed men. I call this "roughly equal". YMMV, but at any rate 12 months ago more women were employed than men.

You can tell everything relevant by knowing the population, total employment by gender and workforce participation rate.

Here's the math.


Just because it doesn't fit the narrative doesn't make it incorrect.

The other grossly misleading thing about "gender pay disparity" is that it ignores the effect of unemployment. Take the money earned by women and divide it by the female workforce and then do the same for men and the disparity disappears.

The average pay for women in the workforce is greater than for men in the workforce.