Louisiana women are the closest they’ve been to making as much money as men since 2014.
Last year, Louisiana women who were full-time wage and salary workers had median usual weekly earnings of $686 or 77.4% of the $886 median usual weekly earnings of their male counterparts, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
The state’s women’s-to-men’s earnings ratio trended upward from 1997 to 2005 before declining to a series low of 65.0% in 2009. Since then, the trend reversed, moving to a series high of 77.5% in 2014. Last year’s women’s-to-men’s earnings ratio was up a percentage point from 2016 and was Louisiana’s second highest since the state series began in 1997.
Nationwide, women earned $770 per week or 81.8% of the $941 median for men.
The earnings comparisons in the bureaus report are on a broad level and do not control for many factors that can be significant in explaining earnings differences, such as job skills and responsibilities, work experience, and specialization.
