It looked pretty good for young women’s earnings in 2011, Bloomberg reports.
Six years ago, the pay gap separating women and men aged 25 to 34 was the smallest ever recorded by the Pew Research Center, with young women earning 97 cents for every dollar paid their young male counterparts.
For the rising generation of U.S. workers, at least, there was very nearly income equality.
Then things started going backwards.
By 2015, the pay gap for 25- to 34-year-olds had widened to 90 cents for every man-earned dollar in that demographic, according to new data from Pew. What happened?
It turns out that what looked like good news for young women earlier this decade was mostly just bad news for men. Women didn’t catch up in 2011—men slid backwards.
“During the recession, men were much harder hit than women in terms of employment losses. They were more likely to be located in jobs and industries that took a big hit,” says Rakesh Kochharm, a Pew economist. “Rather than women catching up, you’re seeing a return to the historical level.”
As Business Report detailed in a recent feature, advocates for equal pay in Louisiana—consistently ranked as having the largest gender pay gap in the U.S.—are hopeful 2017 could be a turning point for the state, whose Legislature has rejected modern pay equity bills ever since they were first introduced at the Capitol during the 2005 session.
