CLOSING THE GAP

For decades, women and people of color have faced pay gaps that have impacted their long-term ability to build wealth. 

Currently, women earn 82 cents for every dollar earned by men, leading to a loss of more than $400,000 over a 40-year career, according to a National Women’s Law Center analysis. For women of color, this gap is even larger, with pay discrimination and overrepresentation in low-wage roles playing into the disproportionately low salaries they receive. 

But in today’s tight labor market, where employees are quitting at record rates and employers are struggling to fill roles, underpaid, marginalized workers are finding new opportunities to seek fairer and higher wages.   

Women, at 46%, are more likely than men, 34%, to say they’re looking for a new job today because they want more money, according to an August poll of more than 1,000 part-time and full-time U.S. workers conducted by PwC. When broken down by race, 82% of Hispanic and 67% of Black employees say they’re looking for more money in a new position, compared with 57% of white, non-Hispanic employees.  

Currently, women who quit their job for a new one are seeing above-average wage growth of 6.4%, compared with men who’ve recently quit seeing wage growth of 5.5%, according to ADP data. But, with women starting from a lower average hourly rate of $27.79, compared with men at $32.61, it’s clear that even today’s increased level of wage growth won’t help solve deep-rooted pay inequities. 

As employees continue to seek more high-paying opportunities, Bhushan Sethi, PwC’s global people and organization co-leader, tells Make It reporter Jennifer Liu that company leaders are going to have to do their part to ensure that current pay practices are fair and equal in order to retain diverse talent. 

“Our recommendation there is that companies need to get ahead of this and analyze the data,” Sethi says. “If they see pay gaps skewed around gender or ethnicity or generation for people performing the same job, that’s something they need to address.”

Have you or someone you know recently quit a job for a new one? If so, was more money the driving factor for this change? Reach out to me via email to share your story at courtney.connley@nbcuni.com or send me a message on Twitter @ClassicalyCourt. 

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