The latter point has been the sophisticated argument about the gender wage gap for some time, an argument that seems quite persuasive to me. Unequal pay for identical work is not the only way that a labor market can be sexist. A labor market that sorts men into higher-paying jobs and women into lower-paying jobs is still sexist, just in a different way. [...]
The correct statistic for those partial to the sophisticated argument should be a completely uncontrolled comparison of the median earnings of all men and women who are in their prime working years (ages twenty-five to fifty-four), including those who work less than full time and those who do not do any paid work. Unlike the NWLC statistic, this comparison reflects the gendered sorting that results in women being more likely to have part-time work and more likely to be out of the labor market altogether. [...]
The difference between the conventional 20 percent finding and the correct 39 percent finding is, as you would expect, completely driven by gendered differences in who engages in full-time work. When I compare full-time workers (those working fifty or more weeks) between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-four, I find the median woman earning $40,000 and the median man earning $50,000. Even though this calculation is slightly different than the NWLC wage gap, it nonetheless shows women earning 20 percent less than men. When I compare all workers (those working one or more weeks) between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-four, I get women earning $35,000 and men earning $47,750, meaning a wage gap of 27 percent. And then when I compare all people in that age band, including non-workers, I get the 39 percent wage gap figure.
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