Some incremental progress has been made in the effort to bring equal pay to women in the workplace, but data indicate women of color still face certain inequities exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, widening their respective wage gaps from last year.
Average hourly earnings for all workers picked up by 5.1% over the past year through June, according to the Labor Department’s June Jobs Report released July 8. The report concurrently showed that while the workforce participation rate for White women remained steady, workforce participation rates for Black women and women overall declined in the last month, underscoring the economic disparities often seen between different racial groups.
That echoes a similar pattern shown by the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey data, which the National Women’s Law Center analyzed in a March report. While “Equal Pay Day,” the day at which women reach the same average annual wages as men earned in the previous year, was celebrated on March 15 with a nine-day jump forward from last year, the respective Equal Pay Days for women of color all decreased.
For Black women, the day retreated from Aug. 3 to Sept. 21; changed from Sept. 18 to Nov. 30 for American Indian women; and moved backward from Oct. 21 to Dec. 8 for Latina women.
State efforts to fix these inequities often fall flat. A law in Mississippi that took...
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