Raw Data: Wages of Men and Women Paid by the Hour

I just wasted about two hours screwing up some data and then screwing it up again, but then, almost by accident, I got this. It’s not what I was looking for, but after two hours, by God, I’m going to show it to you anyway:

These are hourly wages for workers who are paid by the hour. This accounts for about half of all workers (80 million out of 160 million) and it’s pretty solidly working-class. What it shows is two things:

  • Working-class women have made considerable gains on an hourly basis over the past four decades.
  • Younger women have always been closer to earning as much as men, and today earn 92 percent as much. The three older cohorts are at 80-83 percent.

The older cohorts, of course, are more likely to be women with children. I don’t know precisely what the mechanism is, but this seems likely to account for the difference.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate