In 2003, women in the United States earned on average approximately 80 percent as much as U.S. men did per hour. By 2024, the gender pay gap had grown to 84 percent, after peaking at around 86 percent in 2022, demonstrating the importance of understanding the gender wage gap.

Yet the gender wage gap is not equal across all occupations in the U.S. labor market. Female financial service sales agents, for example, currently make 52.7 percent of their male counterparts’ earnings on average, while women working in media and communications make on average 12.9 percent more than men in their field.

The gender wage gap changes across occupations because men and women have not been equally likely to work in all occupations—though this is less true now than it was 20 years ago because occupations have become more gender-balanced since 2003. Figure 2 below shows the share of all workers who are in occupations with a given percentage of female workers, with the left side of the graphic being more male-dominated jobs and the right side being female-dominated occupations. Each line represents the percentage of workers who are employed in occupations that have up to a given percentage of female workers. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2 suggests shifts in employment over time vital to understanding the gender wage gap: The 2024 line has a lower percentage of employment that is majority male than the 2003 line and a (mostly) higher percentage of employment that is majority female. In 2003, for example, 64.4 percent of workers were employed in occupations that were 0 percent to 50 percent female. These shifts suggest that overall U.S. employment has moved toward more gender-balanced or female-majority occupations since 2003.

Figure 2 also demonstrates that, despite these shifts, many U.S. occupations are still dominated by males. Indeed, in 2024, fewer than half of all U.S. workers were employed in occupations with either equal male-female employment or majority-female employment.

So, why are women more likely to work in some occupations than others? Aside from previously studied factors, such as differences in education and treatment in the workplace, some of the answer may be found in what makes a job “good” for women workers, compared to the broader workforce. As such, examining the gender wage gap across occupations by job content is helpful.

Read the full article about the gender wage gap by Chiara Chanoi at Equitable Growth.