Casey Releases County By County Report Showing Gender Pay Gap Is Hurting PA Families

Washington DC- Today, U.S. Senator Bob Casey called on Congress to work to pass pay equity legislation citing a recent report on the continuing gender pay gap during a conference call.  According to the report, in Pennsylvania, women earned $694 per week while their male peers earned $849, a pay gap of 18.3 percent.

“Women performing the same work as men deserve to be paid the same wages,” said Senator Casey. “In Pennsylvania and across the country, many children and families depend on working women’s salaries, and we cannot allow pay inequity to continue. I urge the Republicans and Democrats to work together to find an effective solution to this problem.”

A report by the Democratic Staff of the Joint Economic committee (JEC) finds that in 2012 full-time working women across all races and levels of education earned less on average than their male peers. This persistent gender wage gap has important implications for families and the wider economy. Women’s earnings have become an increasing portion of total family income, making consumption and economic growth in the wider economy more tied to women’s earnings. Lower earnings over their lifetimes also make women less financially secure than men during their retirement years.

The following are highlights from a report by the JEC on the persistent gender pay gap in 2012:

• In Pennsylvania, women earned $694 per week while their male peers earned $849, a pay gap of 18.3 percent.
• The gender pay gap was even larger for older workers in Pennsylvania. For workers over the age of 50, women earned $732 compared to $984 for men, a gap of 25.6 percent.
• For the U.S. as a whole, full-time working women earned $691 per week versus $854 for men, a pay gap of 19.1 percent. The pay gap in the U.S. for older workers was 24.3 percent, with women over 50 earning $752 versus $994 for men.
• The gender pay gap starts for many women in the first year of their careers, and they earn $7,600 less than men of the same group, on average.
• Women earn less than men at every level of educational attainment, facing a possible lifetime earnings gap of over $500,000.
• The pay gap still exists even when taking college majors and job preferences into account.
• Women of all races and ethnicities face the gender pay gap.
• Part-time workers, across occupations, earn less per hour than their full-time counterparts. Two-thirds of these workers are women.
• Social Security benefits, defined benefit pensions, and individual retirement accounts (IRAs) largely depend on how much women earn during their careers, resulting in less income during retirement.

In addition to affecting women’s retirement security, the gender pay gap damages family security. The table below “Number of Pennsylvania Children Wholly or Partially Dependent on Mothers’ Earnings” shows that in 2011 there were 1.8 million children in Pennsylvania who were either wholly or partially dependent on the money that their mothers earned. About one-third of those children were wholly dependent on their mothers’ paychecks, either because they were in a two-parent household where only the mother worked or because they were in a single-parent household with a working mother. To put these numbers in context, there were a total of 2.8 million children living in Pennsylvania in 2011. The table includes the Pennsylvania state total, as well as totals for those counties with populations of 65,000 or more (the threshold for 1-year estimates).