And Women Used To Be Such A Good Bargain!

The gap between men’s and women’s earnings continues (slowly) to shrink. A report issued last month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics documents the trend. Among full-time wage and salary workers, women’s median earnings last year were 80 percent of men’s. That’s up from 63 percent in 1979, the earliest year for which comparable data was collected. It’s also a sign of progress that the disparity is smaller for younger workers: Among Americans age 16-24, women who work full-time make 93 percent as much as men; in the 25-34 age bracket, women make 87 percent as much as men.