For WorldatWork Members
- From Audits to Algorithms: Using Proactive AI for Sustained Pay Equity, Workspan Daily Plus+ article
- How Your Organization Can Mitigate Its Gender Pay Gap, Workspan Daily Plus+ article
- How to Identify Root Causes of Gender Pay Inequity, Workspan Daily Plus+ article
- Navigating Complexities of Pay Equity Gap Analysis Methods, Workspan Magazine article
- Pay Fairness: Achieving Trust and Transparency, Workspan Magazine article
- Pay Equity Planning Guide, tool
- Pay Equity Laws by State — Are You in Compliance? tool
For Everyone
- Pay Equity: Focus Is on ‘What’ and ‘How,’ But Don’t Forget the ‘Why,’ Workspan Daily article
- Data Shows Gender Pay Gap Widened at Level Not Seen in 20 Years, Workspan Daily article
- Understanding Pay Equity, course
- Performing a Pay Equity Analysis, course
- Committing to Pay Equity, course
Full-time employment and compensation for American women reached historic highs in 2025, but the overall aggregate annual earnings gap between them and their male counterparts more than doubled between 2000 and 2025. This is according to a report released July 1 by careers website MyPerfectResume.
The report, which analyzed the most recent annual data from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), stated that the median weekly earnings for women who work full time reached $1,089 in 2025, compared to $493 in 2000 — a 121% increase. Median weekly earnings for U.S. working men employed full time were $1,326 in 2025, vs. $641 in 2000 — a 107% increase.
Comparing these work groups, for every dollar earned by men, women earned approximately 82 cents in 2025, vs. 77 cents in 2000.
Those data points show progress in pay equity and base earnings (a 17.9% increase in real earnings for women, when adjusted for inflation).
When men’s and women’s pay is compared on an annual basis, though, a slightly different story emerges:
- In 2000, the estimated annual earnings difference between full-time employed U.S. men and women was approximately $7,696.
- By 2025, that figure reached approximately $12,324.
Extrapolated over the entire U.S. full-time workforce (67 million working men and 54.5 million working women, according to the BLS data), the aggregate annual gender earnings gap in 2025 was $671 billion, compared to $327 billion in 2000 and $447 billion in 2020.
“Two things happened at the same time: The earnings difference between men and women persisted year over year, and the number of women in the full-time workforce grew significantly,” said Jasmine Escalera, a career expert at MyPerfectResume.
BLS data showed the number of women employed full-time rose by more than 9.5 million over the analyzed 25-year period.
“When a persistent per-worker gap is applied across a larger workforce, the total estimated difference grows even if the gap between women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s narrows slightly,” Escalera said, noting that this figure is an estimate based on median earnings, not a measure of actual wages lost.
“It’s best understood as a directional illustration of the scale of persistent earnings differences across the workforce,” she said.
Editor’s Note: Additional Content
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