The good news: The American Human Development Project, a social research organizationm, has published an analysis of recent Census Bureau data that shows that the gap between men’s and women’s wages is closing.
The bad news: It’s because men’s salaries are falling.
Median earnings for men, adjusted for inflation, fell by $2,433 — or 6 percent — from 2007 to 2010. Women’s earnings fell by just $253 in the same period, a drop of 0.9 percent. As the New York Times reported, some of the recession’s steepest declines were in industries that tend to be dominated by men. Earnings in construction, for example, fell by 5 percent, the analysis found. Meanwhile, median earnings in health care and technical occupations, popular among women, increased by 3 percent.
But the main reason is that only a few are getting ahead in this economy.