2025 Update: The Gender Wage Gap

While pay discrimination against women became illegal in the United States with the passage of the Equal Pay Act more than 60 years ago, a pay gap between men and women persists. Equal Pay Day marks how far into the new year women must work to earn what men earned in the prior year. This year, according to Equal Pay Today, Equal Pay Day falls on March 25th.

In 2023, the New York State Department of Labor (NYSDOL) studied the persistence of the gender pay gap and released “The Gender Pay Gap in the Pandemic Era.” This report examined the impact of COVID-19, as well as other factors, on pay equity, and provided policy recommendations on how New York State could address the pay gap. The report noted that the historical undervaluing of women in the workplace, family care obligations, especially those related to childcare, and a concentration in lower wage jobs all contribute to the gender pay gap. In the past two years, New York has made the following progress in addressing the gender wage gap:

The minimum wage increased by fifty cents in both 2024 and 2025, and in 2027, it will be indexed to inflation. Women are more likely to work minimum wage jobs in sectors such as retail and hospitality. Raising the wage floor will allow minimum wage workers to earn more money over time, taking steps to close some of the wage gap.
In the fall of 2023, New York implemented pay transparency legislation, requiring employers to include expected wages with every job posting. Pay secrecy effectively prevents workers, particularly women, from knowing the value of their work, especially while performing the same job as men.
In 2023, the state implemented paid parental leave for New York State employees to bond with a newborn, fostered, or adopted child. Implementing paid parental leave allows any parent taking time off to welcome a new child to maintain income during that time. It also further reduces the motherhood penalty by allowing fathers to contribute to child care obligations.
The New York State Equal Rights Amendment was passed in November 2024, enshrining gender equity in the New York State Constitution. Discrimination contributes to the gender wage gap.
Since 2024, the state’s Civil Service Department has taken steps to modernize its testing process, eliminating fees and temporarily waiving exam requirements for certain civil service positions. The government workforce traditionally has one of the lowest gender wage gaps due partly to the civil service pay structure. Exam requirements create a large barrier to entry for any individual with family care obligations and low-wage workers who cannot afford time off work to take a test.
Accessible and affordable child care remains a major employment barrier for working parents, especially working women, as women are statistically more likely to take time away from work due to child care obligations. Understanding this need, New York has invested over $7 billion to expand and improve child care accessibility since 2023. The state is also taking steps to implement the framework for universal child care recently released by the Child Care Affordability Task Force.

In addition to the recommendations from the initial report, New York has taken further steps to address the motherhood penalty – one of the greatest challenges to pay parity. In 2024, the state expanded workplace rights by mandating paid time off for breast milk expression. While the right to express milk in the workplace previously existed, the time off was unpaid. The state also became the first in the country to provide paid prenatal leave, ensuring any pregnant employee has access to 20 hours of paid sick time to use exclusively for pregnancy-related care.  

As a final recommendation, NYSDOL committed to providing updated data annually on the gender wage gap in New York State. What follows is the update for 2025.

New York State’s Gender Wage Gap: 2025 Update (based on 2023 data)

Based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), in 2023, the most recent data available, full-time, year-round working women in New York State, on average, were paid 87.3 cents per dollar that men were paid (a wage gap of 12.7%). This gap was slightly smaller in 2022, when women were paid 87.5 cents on the dollar (a wage gap of 12.5%). Women in New York fared significantly better compared to the national average of 81.1 cents per dollar. New York had the third smallest wage gap among states in the U.S., behind only Vermont and Rhode Island.

In 2023, the median earnings for women working full-time and year-round in New York State was $62,111 compared to $71,168 for men. Put another way, a typical woman in New York State earned $9,057 less than her male counterpart in 2023. If this wage gap were to remain unchanged, she would earn about $362,280 less than a man over the course of a 40-year career.

Over the past decade, the gender wage gap in New York State has only narrowed by 1.4 cents. In 2013, women earned 85.9 cents per dollar that men were paid. Even though women today are more likely than men to have graduated from college, the gender wage gap persists. There are several reasons typically cited for the gender wage gap including occupational segregation, gender discrimination, devaluing of women’s work, and societal norms that continue to hold women back.

More Women Work Part-Time

Gender wage gaps are typically calculated using data for full-time, year-round workers to minimize the impact of differences in work hours and employment patterns. However, women are more likely to work part-time than men because they continue to bear a disproportionate burden from family caregiving responsibilities. According to ACS data, in 2023 women made up a larger proportion of the part-time workforce than men in New York State — 57.5% compared to 42.5%. In addition, only 23.8% of working men 16 and older were part-time, versus 33.8% of women. If part-time and part-year workers were included in wage gap calculations, women earned just 78.2 cents for every dollar earned by men.

Women Made Gains in Higher-Paying White-Collar Occupations

The types of jobs women and men hold and the earnings differences among these occupations also contribute to the gender wage gap. According to ACS data, while men still had a higher share of overall full-time, year-round employment in New York State in 2023 (54.6%), women accounted for most of the gains in employment between 2022 and 2023. Employment gains for women were centered in higher paying management, business, science, and arts occupations – women added nearly 40,000 jobs in that category between 2022 and 2023, while men lost 8,400 jobs. While this occupational group was the highest paid in New York State (with a median wage of $90,717 in 2023), women in these occupations on average were paid just 80.7 cents for every dollar that men earned.

Exhibit 1: Women’s Job Gains Centered in Professional Occupations

No Data Found

Source: Census Bureau, 2023 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S2402

Women also increased employment in service occupations, adding nearly 22,000 jobs between 2022 and 2023. Job gains were centered in healthcare support (+11,600) and personal care and service occupations (+11,000), which are both low-paying occupations. Female-dominated care occupations such as these tend to be devalued and underpaid. Even as women were overrepresented in these occupations, they were still paid less on average than men. For example, women accounted for 82.2% of overall employment in healthcare support occupations but were paid just 90.7 cents for every dollar earned by men.

Table 1: Women Earn Less Than Men in Every Occupational Grouping

Gender Wage Gap and Share of Female Employed by Occupation, New York State: Full-Time, Year-Round Civilian Employed Population 16 Years and Over

Loading..........

The Data is Not Available

Source: Census Bureau, 2023 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Tables S2412 and S2402

Earnings Vary Significantly by Educational Attainment

Workers’ earnings typically increase as their years of post-secondary education increase, regardless of gender. In New York State, women 25 years or older are more likely to get a bachelor’s degree than men of the same age group (42.1% of women vs. 39.0% of men). While more women going to college has helped narrow the gender wage gap over the long run, it hasn’t solved it. In 2023, women with a bachelor’s degree earned 80.1% as much as men with bachelor’s degrees, a similar gap is found among high school only graduates (80.0%). Women with advanced degrees, on average, earned less than men with only a bachelor’s degree (95.1%). This underscores the challenges faced by women of all education levels in closing the pay gap.

Exhibit 2: Women Are Paid Less Than Men at Every Education Level

No Data Found

Source: Census Bureau, 2023 American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) 1-Year Estimates

Intersection of Gender and Race and Ethnicity Compounds Pay Gap

Women of color in New York State experience the largest gender wage gaps due to intersecting racial, ethnic, and gender biases. When looking at women’s wages across racial and ethnic categories among full-time, year-round workers, based on ACS data, Hispanic women in New York State suffered the largest pay gap, earning just 60.6 cents for every dollar earned by White, non-Hispanic men in 2023. Black women also experienced wide pay gaps during 2023, earning just 67.7 cents for every dollar earned by White men. White women earned 84.8 cents for every dollar of their male counterparts, while Asian women were closer to parity with White men, earning 89.9 cents.

Exhibit 3: Black and Hispanic Women Experience the Largest Gender Wage Gap Compared to White, non-Hispanic Men

No Data Found

* Includes Hispanic or Latino
Note: Full-time, year-round workers aged 16 years and over with earnings.
Source: Census Bureau, 2023 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates

The gender wage gap varies by race and ethnicity because of differences in worker education, experience, occupation, and other factors that drive the gender wage gap for women overall. Occupational segregation — where one demographic group is overrepresented or underrepresented in certain job categories – is a major driver of the overall gender wage gap. However, women of color are disproportionately clustered into the lowest-earning occupations due to the compounded effect of racial and ethnic bias and sexism.

Among working women in 2023, 57.6% of Latinas were clustered into two occupational groups— service occupations and sales and office occupations. This is compared with 52.0% of Black women, 38.0% of White women, and 43.2% of Asian women in the same job categories. This trend was particularly pronounced in healthcare support occupations within the services group which paid women just $38,800 per year in 2023. This is 37.5% lower than the median wage for all full-time, year-round employed women in New York State. Latinas’ concentration in healthcare support was 2.6 times as large as their share of the overall workforce, while Black women’s share was 3.5 times as large.

In 2023, only 34.2% of Hispanic women and 42.6% of Black women were employed in higher-paying management, professional, and related jobs, compared with 58.1% of White women and 52.9% of Asian women. Hispanic women were also highly underrepresented in computer, engineering, and science occupations – making up only 2.4% of this group but 8.8% of total employment across all occupations. Black women, who comprised 7.2% of total employment across all occupations, accounted for just 3.0% of these STEM professions.

The Gender Wage Gap Grows With Age

Women in New York State begin their careers on the cusp of wage parity with men, with women ages 25 to 34 earning 99.0 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts in 2023. As workers progress through their careers, median earnings for women grow more slowly than median earnings for men, resulting in widening wage gaps. In fact, by the time women reach the ages of 45 to 54, women’s median earnings begin to decline while men’s earnings continue to grow. The wage gap almost doubles over a 20-year career, from 90.2% for women ages 35 to 44 to 80.6% for women 55 to 64 years old.

Exhibit 4: Earnings for Women Begin to Decline by the Time They Reach 45

No Data Found

Source: Census Bureau, 2023 American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) 1-Year Estimates

The Motherhood Penalty

The wage gap worsens most around ages 35 to 44 when many people are having children and caregiving demands on women are increasing. Mothers are more likely than fathers to take time away from the workforce or cut back hours when they have children. Even if they fully return to the workplace, mothers are perceived as less competent and less committed to their careers, further missing out on promotions to better-paid positions. Mothers may also move to lower-paying professions, like customer service and retail, that tend to have fewer hours, giving moms more flexibility to care for their children.

Whether by choice or necessity, parenthood leads some women to put their careers on hold but tends to have the opposite effect among men. Based on data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), in 2023, 74.1% of mothers ages 25 to 44 in New York State who have children at home were active in the workforce, compared with 95.8% of fathers. But among those without children at home in this age group, 85.1% of men and 84.6% of women participated in the workforce.

While women pay a wage penalty for motherhood, research has shown that a “fatherhood wage premium” also contributes to the gender wage gap. Fathers actually have higher earnings than men without children. This “wage premium” has been attributed to long-running positive biases where fathers are perceived as more motivated, dependable, hard-working, and loyal compared to childless men. In New York State, men ages 25 to 44 with children under 18 working full-time earned 16.5% more than men without children in 2023, while mothers working full-time earned 28.7% less than fathers. Women without children were closer to parity, earning 94.1% of what men without children earned.

Status of Child Care in New York State

The availability of affordable quality child care is essential to a woman’s ability to participate in the workforce. In 2023, there were 1,177,259 children under the age of 6 living with one or both parents in New York State. Of these, 833,613 lived in households where all available parents were in the labor force. Governor Kathy Hochul understands the importance of child care and has invested $7 billion to make child care more accessible and affordable. Between 2022 and 2023, the state added 10,029 seats at licensed and registered child care providers with a maximum capacity of 466,110 at 14,706 facilities in 2023 (excluding school age child care).

Most of the growth in child care capacity has been concentrated at licensed day care centers. In 2023, there were 4,246 licensed day care centers in New York State with a maximum capacity of 323,992 children. Compared to 2022, there were 69 more centers with 6,956 more seats. Center-based child care for infants is generally the most expensive type of child care. According to analysis from Child Care Aware of America (CCAoA), as of 2023, New York State had the sixth least affordable center-based infant care. At $19,584 annually, it was 128.3% higher than annual in-state tuition in New York’s public four-year universities and would cost a married couple 14.7% of their household income and single-parent families an average of 51.7%. Similarly, New York had the fourth least affordable center-based toddler care at $18,081 per year, and the second least affordable center-based care for 4-year-olds at $16,415 per year.

Family child care, which provides care to non-relative children in a residence, had a maximum capacity of 142,118 in 2023, up from 139,045 the previous year. Although family child care tends to be less expensive than center-based care, New York had the second least affordable family child care for infants at $16,383 per year. Care for toddlers and 4-year-olds was also expensive compared to the rest of the nation. The annual cost for toddlers was $15,535 per year (second least affordable) and $14,552 per year for 4-year-olds (third least affordable).

Data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), also reveals that the private sector child day care services industry in New York grew between 2022 and 2023, adding 308 establishments and 5,948 employees. This data from the QCEW primarily captures private sector center-based workers, including child care, preschool, and school-age programs, but exclude self-employed workers, such as the owners of home-based child care businesses. This data also excludes programs that are located in establishments whose prime function is something other than child care.

Conclusion

Any gender wage gap, no matter the size, is an injustice impacting not only working women and their families today, but also generations of women that will enter the workforce in the future. In 2023, New York State had the third smallest wage gap in the nation with women earning the equivalent of 87.3 cents to each man’s dollar. Nationally, women earned just 81.1 cents for each dollar men do overall. While New York has implemented nation-leading policies and reforms to protect and empower women in the workplace, such as pay transparency, minimum wage increases, paid prenatal leave, and paid parental leave benefits for the state workforce, more work needs to be done to close the gender wage gap.