Dive Brief:
- The gender pay gap is alive and well, a recent analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data by resume builder MyPerfectResume found; women earned about $0.82 per dollar earned by men in 2025.
- Even though women’s median weekly earnings doubled in the past 25 years, the uncontrolled gap between what men and women earned increased more than 60% to $12,324 annually by 2025, the study found.
- “As more women joined the full-time workforce, the per-worker difference compounded into a much larger estimated overall gap,” Jasmine Escalera, a career expert, wrote in a blog post on the results.
Dive Insight:
The estimated aggregate annual gender earnings gap was greater than $671 billion in 2025, compared to about $327 billion a quarter of a century ago, MyPerfectResume found. During that time, an estimated 9.5 million more women entered the full-time workforce.
“Most conversations about gender wage gap statistics focus on percentages … But women don’t experience the gap as a percentage. They experience it in their bank accounts, their budgets, and their financial futures,” Escalera wrote.
The $12,324 gap translates into several months of rent in many markets; a portion of childcare costs; retirement or emergency savings; healthcare premiums; daily living expenses; and debt repayment, Escalera explained.
The gender pay gap exists at every education level and “widens significantly” as women get older and advance in their careers, a March report by compensation vendor Payscale showed. Women 45 and older earn $0.71 per dollar men earn, and women executives earn $0.69, per the report.
One contributing factor is how raises are distributed, according to research from an assistant professor of accounting at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. Pay raises are typically awarded as percentages of existing salaries, which “perpetuates pay gaps” if the salaries were unequal to start, the research showed.