What is the gender pay gap? This is a question I have frequently asked myself while analyzing data at PayScale. I look at data on a daily basis that shows women earn less than men. My job provides me the unique opportunity to analyze compensation data that is crowd-sourced from millions of people, but what does it really mean to analyze the data? It is easy to aggregate salary profiles and calculate the national median pay for men ($60,200) and the national median pay for women ($44,800) and then do some basic math to show the percentage change male vs. female is -25.6 percent. But when I simply analyze the data and say that women earn 74 cents for every dollar a man earns when comparing all men to all women, am I done?
At PayScale, we look at these numbers and immediately start asking questions. First, the most obvious question: why do we see this difference? Specifically, can we determine what factors are contributing most to this difference? Can we control for these factors? Do we still see this difference? Does the gender pay gap change with marital and family status, job, industry, etc.? To answer these questions, PayScale’s fabulous consumer marketing team and I produced an entire data package that takes a closer look at the gender pay gap.
I was able to dive into the raw data and compare the salaries of all men and women taking into account a variety of factors. What’s even better? We have the ability at PayScale to look at a more “apples-to-apples” comparison by controlling for measured compensable factors including job, years of experience, industry, education, and more by leveraging our complex statistical compensation model. Therefore, we are able to calculate a controlled female median pay ($58,600). When comparing similar men and women in similar jobs, we find the median pay for women is 2.7 percent less than the male median pay. Are you thinking “well that’s not that bad”? Think again. Not only are women in the same roles with the same measured compensable factors still paid less on average, this also shows high paying jobs and industries are still dominated by men. How’s that? If men and women had an equal share in lucrative positions, our uncontrolled pay gap would not be a whopping -25.6 percent.
This is a difficult story to tell, even with access to the largest database of individual compensation profiles in the world. After analyzing, slicing, and dicing over 1.4 million salary profiles, we needed a way to present this data. As a Tableau enthusiast, my first inclination was to make a data visualization to show the pay inequity found. The problem is that one visualization simply can’t tell the whole story. That’s where the Tableau story points came into play. The result is a visualization with six story points that reveals the truth about the gender pay gap and highlights the most important takeaways from our analysis. Make sure to “See the full story” (bottom right each story point)!
See the full story on payscale.com
At PayScale, we look at these numbers and immediately start asking questions. First, the most obvious question: why do we see this difference? Specifically, can we determine what factors are contributing most to this difference? Can we control for these factors? Do we still see this difference? Does the gender pay gap change with marital and family status, job, industry, etc.? To answer these questions, PayScale’s fabulous consumer marketing team and I produced an entire data package that takes a closer look at the gender pay gap.
I was able to dive into the raw data and compare the salaries of all men and women taking into account a variety of factors. What’s even better? We have the ability at PayScale to look at a more “apples-to-apples” comparison by controlling for measured compensable factors including job, years of experience, industry, education, and more by leveraging our complex statistical compensation model. Therefore, we are able to calculate a controlled female median pay ($58,600). When comparing similar men and women in similar jobs, we find the median pay for women is 2.7 percent less than the male median pay. Are you thinking “well that’s not that bad”? Think again. Not only are women in the same roles with the same measured compensable factors still paid less on average, this also shows high paying jobs and industries are still dominated by men. How’s that? If men and women had an equal share in lucrative positions, our uncontrolled pay gap would not be a whopping -25.6 percent.
This is a difficult story to tell, even with access to the largest database of individual compensation profiles in the world. After analyzing, slicing, and dicing over 1.4 million salary profiles, we needed a way to present this data. As a Tableau enthusiast, my first inclination was to make a data visualization to show the pay inequity found. The problem is that one visualization simply can’t tell the whole story. That’s where the Tableau story points came into play. The result is a visualization with six story points that reveals the truth about the gender pay gap and highlights the most important takeaways from our analysis. Make sure to “See the full story” (bottom right each story point)!
- The Gender Pay Gap Is Real, But More Complicated Than You Think
- Jobs with Higher Pay Are Often Dominated by Men
- Women Get Promoted Less Often & Earn Less When They Do
- Data Shows A Larger Pay Gap For Women With Children
- Work-Life Balance Impacts Womens' Salaries More
- Tech & The Gender Pay Gap: IT's Complicated
See the full story on payscale.com
