More gender pay gap bad news: Utah is third-worst in new report

Brice Wallace 

Another study of the gender pay gap shows Utah has the third-largest such gap in the U.S. and is only a whisker away from being second-worst.

Using data from the 2021 American Community Survey and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, personal finance site MoneyGeek in February released data showing the states with the largest and smallest wage gaps among men and women working full time in 2021. It found that in the U.S., women made $11,180 less than men that year.

Utah statistics indicate median pay for women was 73 percent of the men’s median. That put Utah behind only Wyoming’s 68.5 percent and Louisiana’s 72.9 percent among the states with the largest gender pay gap.

The median annual earnings for men in Utah was $61,269, while the median for women was $44,707.

In contrast, Vermont had the smallest wage gap, at 93.1 percent of men’s annual earnings.

A report from the Pew Research Center released earlier this month shows that the U.S. gender pay gap has remained relatively stable over the past two decades. In 2022, women earned an average of 82 percent of what men earned, based on median hourly earnings of both full- and part-time workers. In 2002, women earned 80 percent as much as men.

In its most recent analysis of full-time workers, the U.S. Census Bureau pegged women’s pay, on average, as 84 percent of men’s in 2021.

In a more-recent period, MoneyGeek said women earned 83 percent of men’s pay in 2021, up slightly from 81.2 percent in 2015.

The Pew study also showed that the gap was smaller for workers ages 25 to 34 than for all workers 16 and older.

On the plus side, the MoneyGeek study indicates that women’s earnings in Utah rose 6.8 percent from 2021 to 2022, above the national average of 5.1 percent and the 14th-highest increase among states. Rhode Island led the way with an 11.9 percent rise during that time.

“While income inequality is worse in some places than others, the average American woman can expect to earn less than her male counterpart, no matter what industry she chooses to pursue or how hard she works,” MoneyGeek said.

MoneyGeek tied the gender pay gap to politics. Women's pay is higher in Democratic-leaning states (83.6 percent) than Republican-leaning states (79.4 percent), it said. Women earn 29.5 percent more, or $12,817 more, in blue states than those in red ones. Eight of the 10 states with the biggest wage gaps in America lean Republican, while eight of the 10 with the smallest gaps lean Democratic, it said.

The Pew study attributed the gender pay gap to several factors, including educational attainment, occupational segregation and work experience.

“Even though women have increased their presence in higher-paying jobs traditionally dominated by men, such as professional and managerial positions, women as a whole continue to be overrepresented in lower-paying occupations relative to their share of the workforce,” it said. “This may contribute to gender differences in pay.”

Pew also said men and women have differing views about the cause of the gap. Women are much more likely than men to say a major reason for the gap is that employers treat women differently. And while 45 percent of women say a major factor is that women make different choices about how to balance work and family, men are slightly less likely to hold that view (40 percent).

Pew last year released a calculator showing the pay differences by gender and age group in the 250 largest metro areas in 2019. Women over age 16 in 2019 in the Provo-Orem metro area earned 62 percent of men that same age. The figures were higher in Ogden-Clearfield, 70 percent; Salt Lake City, 77 percent; and St. George, 79 percent.