Chart of the Day: The Gender Wage Gap by Occupation

Today’s chart of the day is Figure 5 from Brad Foster, Marta Murray-Close, Christin Landivar, and Mark deWolf’s paper “An Evaluation of the Gender Wage Gap Using Linked Survey and Administrative Data”. In this paper they are able to explore the role of occupational segregation in a way that has not been feasible before using survey data linked with IRS administrative earnings records.

The chart shows the female/male wage ratio by detailed occupational categories, with some occupations highlighted for reference. There aren’t a lot of occupations where women earn more than men. Counselors, Dieticians, and Personal Appearance Workers are the ones highlighted.

The workers between the green “Equal wages” line and red “Total wage ratio” line are occupations where wages are more equal than average, but men still earn more. Nurses, teachers, and lawyers are in that category. The most unequal wages are in the financial sector.

The paper goes on to evaluate the characteristics of the occupations that are more and less equal. More competitive, and more hazardous occupations have higher gender wage gaps, as well as occupations that award longer hours of work and those that have a larger proportion of women (still trying to wrap my head around this last one).

I assume, from the highlighted occupations, that securities and commodities, financial managers, and chief executives are all competitive jobs that reward high hours. I’m not sure if there are any occupations that seem particularly dangerous, but dieticians are probably not subject to many hazards. And maybe occupations like retail sales and other entry level, low wage employment is driving the pattern of occupations with a large proportion of women having a larger wage gap.