Women are paid less than men—and the gap is getting worse, not better

1. What you need to know

The pay gap is real, and it’s grown two years in a row

Women working full-time, year-round in the U.S. earn just 81 cents for every dollar earned by men—down from 84 cents in 2022 and 83 cents in 2023. This is the first time in recorded history that the wage gap has widened two years in a row.

When you include all workers—adding the millions who work part-time or for part of the year—the gap widens further, to 76 cents on the dollar.¹

It’s worse for women of color

The wage gap is even wider when you break it down by race and ethnicity. Compared to every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men:²

• Black women earn 63 cents
• Latinas earn 54 cents
• Native American women earn 53 cents
• Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander women earn 83 cents on average—but this varies widely, with some groups earning as little as 50 cents

2. How it works

Women are better educated—but the more education they get, the wider the gap

Women have been graduating from college at higher rates than men for decades. But diplomas don’t translate to dollars: as women and men become more educated, the pay gap widens.³

The pay gap by education level

Women are asking—they’re just not getting

Women are asking for promotions and negotiating for raises at the same rates as men—and we’ve seen this in our research since 2015.⁴

When women dominate a field, pay goes down

Research shows that when women join an industry in large numbers, wages fall. For example, as parks and recreation shifted from a predominantly male to predominantly female workforce, wages dropped by 57 percentage points.⁵

3. Why it matters

Women are losing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars

The pay gap is not about a single paycheck. Over the course of a career, the lost income can add up to over a million dollars:⁶

• Women overall lose on average $462,000
• Black women, Latinas, and Native American women lose on average over $1 million
• AANHPI women lose on average $187,616—but some groups lose almost $1 million

The pay gap widens the wealth gap

The wage gap doesn’t just affect paychecks—it shapes how much women own over a lifetime. Single white women own 92 cents on the dollar compared to single white men. Single Black women own less than 8 cents on the dollar compared to single white men.⁷

Mothers are hit the hardest

Mothers are breadwinners in over half of U.S. households⁸—and they are paid significantly less than fathers. Mothers who work full-time, year-round are paid approximately 63 cents for every dollar paid to fathers—a gap that holds across state and occupation, and gets worse for mothers of color.⁹

Closing the gap benefits everyone

If women were paid fairly, we could cut the U.S. poverty rate in half and inject over $1.6 trillion into the U.S. economy—equivalent to 6.3% of U.S. GDP.¹⁰

¹ National Women’s Law Center, “A Window Into the Wage Gap: What’s Behind It and How to Close It,” January 2026, https://nwlc.org/resource/wage-gap-explainer/.
² Ibid.
³ U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, “Degrees Conferred by Postsecondary Institutions, by Level of Degree and Sex of Student: Selected Years, 1869–70 Through 2029–30,” 2020, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_318.10.asp; Elise Gould, Katherine deCourcy, Melat Fast, and Ben Zipperer, “Gender Pay Gap Hits Historic Low in 2024—But Remains Too Large,” Economic Policy Institute, March 25, 2025, https://www.epi.org/blog/gender-pay-gap-2024/.
⁴ LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company, Women in the Workplace 2019, October 2019; LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company, Women in the Workplace 2025, December 2025, https://womenintheworkplace.com.
⁵ Claire Cain Miller, “As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops,” The New York Times, March 18, 2016.
⁶ National Women’s Law Center, “The Lifetime Wage Gap, State by State,” February 2025, https://nwlc.org/resource/the-lifetime-wage-gap-state-by-state/; National Women’s Law Center, “Black Women and the Wage Gap,” March 2025, https://nwlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/EPD-FS-2025-Black-3.18.25v2.pdf; National Women’s Law Center, “The Lifetime Wage Gap by State for Latinas,” March 2024, https://nwlc.org/resource/the-lifetime-wage-gap-by-state-for-latinas/; National Women’s Law Center, “The Lifetime Wage Gap by State for Native Women,” March 2024, https://nwlc.org/resource/the-lifetime-wage-gap-by-state-for-native-women/; National Women’s Law Center, “Some Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Women Lose $1 Million or More
Over a Lifetime to the Racist and Sexist Wage Gap,” March 2025, https://nwlc.org/resource/wage-gap-aanhpi-women/.
⁷ Daan Struyven, Gizelle George-Joseph, and Daniel Milo, “Black Womenomics: Investing in the Underinvested,” Goldman Sachs, March 9, 2021, https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/pages/black-womenomics-f/black-womenomics-report.pdf.
⁸ Julie Anderson, "Breadwinner Mothers by Race/Ethnicity and State," IWPR #Q079, Institute for Women’s Policy Research, April 2020, https://iwpr.org/breadwinner-mothers-by-race-ethnicity-and-state/.
⁹ Personal communication with Tori Coan, Research Manager for Economic Justice, National Partnership for Women and Families, March 2026.
¹⁰ Jessica Milli et al., “The Impact of Equal Pay on Poverty and the Economy,” IWPR #C455, Institute for Women’s Policy Research, April 5, 2017, https://iwpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/C455.pdf.