Wage gap for Florida women lower than national average

The wage gap median between full-time female and male workers in Florida is lower than in the U.S. as a whole, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers in the U.S. stood at $753 in the third quarter of 2011. Full-time working women had median weekly earnings of $673, 81 percent of the $827 median for men, according to Labor Statistics numbers.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel reports today that, according to the bureau, in 2010 Florida women who worked full time took home a median paycheck of $647, almost 84 percent of the median $773 earned by full-time male workers in the state, while “a decade ago, Florida women’s salaries were only 76.3 percent of men’s pay.”

A Bureau of Labor Statistics July report (.pdf) indicates that nationally, in 2010, “full-time wage and salary female workers had median weekly earnings of $669 (81 percent of the median weekly earnings of their male counterparts).” The report adds: “In 1979, the first year for which comparable earnings data are available, women earned 62 percent of what men earned.”

In a report released last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that in the U.S. “female-to-male earnings ratio varied by race and ethnicity. White women earned 82.5 percent as much as their male counterparts, whereas the comparable ratios were 90.2 percent for African American women, 70.1 percent for Asian women, and 92.9 percent for Hispanic women.”

The Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy (known as RISEP) at Florida International University writes that “historically, men have always earned higher wages than women although the gap has narrowed somewhat with women’s wages increasing faster than men’s in the U.S. The pattern looks different for Florida however, as men’s wages have increased significantly in the state since 1979 along with women’s.”

The RISEP report issued in September adds:

• Wages for both men and women in Florida have been catching up to their national counterparts for several decades.
• In 2010, women in Florida nearly reached the wages of women in the U.S.
• The recession continued this trend, as women’s wages in Florida have increased by 4 percent over the course of the recession, compared with 1.87 percent for women in the nation as a whole.
• In 2010 men’s wages fell slightly in Florida, by 1.2 percent, while women’s increased by about 1.2 percent.