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Nationally, women earned about 80 cents on the male dollar at the median, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says. That came out to a weekly paycheck of $726 for women and $942 for men in New Jersey; $638 for women and $798 for men nationwide.
In the end, that makes it far more difficult to support a family on the female median.
The bureau cites commonly chosen fields for women, such as health care and education, which clearly aren’t valued as highly as, say, engineering.
Women also tend to have shorter workweeks. Men more often put in more than 40 hours a week, the agency said.
But that’s a bit too simplistic. It cuts much deeper than that: Studies have shown that female lawyers, corrections officers and others earn about 80 percent on the male dollar.
Where it gets interesting is when you look at the demographic: Women from 24 to 35 years old earned 89 cents for every $1 earned by their male counterparts — probably because they’re more likely than their moms to have college degrees.
Some may call it progress: When the government began keeping track in 1979, full-time female workers nationwide made 62 cents on the male dollar.
But here comes the head-scratcher: The number peaked at 81 percent nationwide in 2005 and 2006, before dropping slightly over the following two years.
So, in the end, what really accounts for the discrepancies?
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