Pay Equity Remains Elusive in Connecticut, Data Shows
/The average Connecticut worker is paid over $7,398 more per year than workers across the country. By many measures, Connecticut is a very rich state. Disparities, however, remain abundant.
Analysis by New Haven-based DataHaven of the most recent U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data indicate that working women in Connecticut are paid 69 cents for every dollar paid to working men, as the state’s wage gap stubbornly continues. The Connecticut gap is slightly wider than the national average, which indicat
es that women are paid 71 cents for every dollar a man earns.
The wage gap appears within each education level, according to the DataHaven analysis. In fact, Connecticut women who have attended some college but didn't complete a degree earn less money than men who never started college, and women with graduate degrees on average earn less than men with only a bachelor's degree.
Only 54 percent of working women in Connecticut work full-time, compared with 67 percent of men. That may be a possible explanation for women's lower wages - fewer women work full-time than men. DataHaven notes that part-time workers tend to earn much less money than full-time workers, and there are many reasons why someone might not be working full-time. “But that doesn't explain everything,” the DataHaven summary notes.
The analysis points out that the wage gap isn't closed among full-time workers. Women working full-time earn 81 cents on the full-time male dollar. The gap among full-time workers is smaller, but still persistent.
Taking the analysis one level deeper, DataHaven found that even within the same occupation type, women are paid less, and the gap is worse in some occupations than others. There's an especially large pay gap within the high-salary management, business, and finance occupations.
Connecticut also has a racial divide. White and Asian women are much closer to closing the wage gap than Black and Latina women. On average, white and Asian women in Connecticut actually make more money than Black and Latino men, the data indicate. When looking at just full-time workers, white and Asian women are closer to equal pay with men, but black and
Latina women are paid far less.
DataHaven's mission is to improve quality of life by collecting, interpreting and sharing public data for effective decision-making. The organization has served Greater New Haven and Connecticut as a nonprofit organization since 1992, working with many partners to develop reports, tools, and technical assistance programs that make information more useful to local communities.
(Infographics developed by DataHaven)
