Table of Contents

The Gender Pay Gap in the Pandemic Era

March 14, 2023 Equal Pay Day

Progress to Date: Since the 2018 Report

For the first time in its 245-year history, the people of New York elected a woman, Kathy Hochul, as their governor to a full four-year term in 2022. Additionally, an historic number of women have been elected and appointed to offices in New York including Attorney General Letitia James, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Assembly Majority Leader Crystal D. Peoples-Stokes.

Governor Hochul has also prioritized uplifting women with a number of key appointments to the highest levels in her own administration:

Karen Persichilli Keogh

Secretary to the Governor

Liz Fine

Counsel to the Governor

Kathryn Garcia

Director of State Operations

Stacy Lynch

Chief of Staff

Julie Wood

Communications Director

Robin Chappelle Golston

Executive Deputy Secretary

Melissa Bochenski

Deputy Chief of Staff

Julissa Gutierrez

Chief Diversity Officer

Rose Rodriguez

 Appointments Secretary

Keeping with the Governor’s inauguration pledge “to make a difference,” New York State has implemented several bold initiatives to bring about genuine equality and end gender bias in the workplace. Examples include:

2023

  • Investment in Child Care.  Governor Hochul’s FY 2023 Budget included $7 billion in investments over four years in expanding access to affordable childcare. In addition, the Budget increases the income eligibility threshold for child care subsidies to 300 percent of the federal poverty level ($83,250 for a family of four), extending eligibility to more than half of young children in New York. The State Budget also expands access to high-quality child care by increasing the child care market rate to include 80 percent of providers. This change will broaden the child care options available to subsidy families while also increasing reimbursements for child care providers.
  • Paid Parental Leave. In 2023, Governor Hochul launched a nation-leading initiative to offer fully paid parental leave benefits to more than 10,000 unrepresented New York State employees. Employees will be eligible to receive 12 weeks of fully paid leave to use for bonding with a newborn, fostered, or adopted child. The Governor also directed the Office of Employee Relations to engage State unions on extending this benefit to their employees through collective bargaining.

2022

  • Pay Transparency Legislation. In 2022, Governor Hochul signed landmark legislation establishing a statewide pay transparency law in New York, requiring employers to list salary ranges for all advertised jobs and promotions. Salary transparency is one of the most essential tools in bringing about pay equality and empowers women – and all New Yorkers – with information that can help them earn a fair wage.  
  • Preventing Workplace Harassment. In 2022, Governor Hochul signed a package of legislation to address workplace harassment and discrimination, which disproportionally affects women. The legislation includes providing a confidential hotline for complaints of workplace sexual harassment, expanding New York State Human Rights Law to include public employers in harassment suits, and prohibiting the release of personnel files as a retaliatory action against employees.  
  • Mandatory Sexual Harassment Prevention Training. In 2023, the Department of Labor will release updated sexual harassment prevention training materials and a model policy – important and free resources for the business community. In 2018, New York State became the first state in the nation to require all employers to conduct annual sexual harassment training for their employees.  
  • Protections Against Gender-Based Violence. In 2022, Governor Hochul issued Executive Order 17 which expanded existing requirements for domestic violence policies to a gender-based violence policy that covers stalking and sexual assault.  The Executive Order also requires annual training for supervisors, domestic violence agency liaisons, and human resources staff.  
  • Rights for Nursing Mothers. In 2022, Governor Hochul signed legislation expanding the rights of nursing employees in New York.  This new law sets detailed standards for safe and sanitary lactation spaces and protects workers from retaliation for asserting their right to pump at work. 
  • Pay Raises for Nurses in Civil Service Positions. In 2022, Governor Hochul raised salaries for 6,500 registered nurses in civil service employment who had been underpaid.
  • Protections for Employees to Take Time Off. In 2022, Governor Hochul signed into law a measure prohibiting employers from using abusive attendance policies to punish their employees for taking legally protected time off. These policies often disproportionately affect women who take time off to care for children and other family members.   
  • Increased Pay for Home Care Workers.  In 2022, Governor Hochul set aside $7.3 billion dollars in the State’s budget to provide for a pay raise by $3.00 per hour over two years for home care workers.  The increase helps workers who are due for a raise, and families who need their help.
  • Expanded Domestic Violence Protections. In 2022, Governor Hochul signed legislation protecting victims of domestic violence from discrimination in areas such as housing, education and public accommodations.

2021

  • Siblings Included in Paid Family Leave. In 2021, Governor Hochul signed bill that expand the definition of “family member” to include siblings under the New York Paid Family Leave Law, so working families would not have to choose between caring for their loved ones and risking their economic security.

2020

  • Salary History Ban. In 2020, a salary history ban aimed at bringing New York one step closer to narrowing the gender wage gap became law. The law prohibits all public and private employers from asking prospective or current employees about their salary history and compensation. This law helps women, who often make lower wages even when doing the same jobs as men, to catch up.   
  • Child Care Availability Task Force Report. In 2020, under then-Lieutenant Governor Hochul’s leadership, the Child Care Availability Task Force completed a comprehensive review of shortcomings in providing affordable and high-quality child care in New York and put forward a set of recommendations to help address the crisis, including making it easier to access assistance, increasing income eligibility thresholds, expanding access to new tax incentives, modernizing regulations, and creating careers pathways to retain workers, and a state/employer supported pilot program. Together, these programs can make a significant difference in working women’s and families’ lives. The task force will continue this important work in 2023 as the impact of the pandemic has increased the urgency with which the state must act.  
  • COVID Paid Sick Leave. In response to the outbreak of novel coronavirus (COVID-19), New York State implemented programs that guarantee workers job protection and financial compensation in the event they, or their minor dependent child, are subject to a mandatory or precautionary order of quarantine or isolation issued by a state or local governmental entity. 
  • Paid Sick Leave. In 2020, legislation was signed establishing the right to paid leave for New Yorkers. New York’s paid sick leave law requires employers with five or more employees or a net income of more than $1 million to provide paid sick leave to employees and for employers with fewer than five employees and a net income of $1 million or less to provide unpaid sick leave to employees.   
  • Subminimum Wage. In 2020, New York State eliminated the subminimum wage for workers in miscellaneous industries such as car wash attendants, hairdressers, and nail salon workers. This action helped address the prevalence of wage theft in these industries for an estimated 70,000 workers, over two thirds of whom are women.

Policy Recommendations

As New York State emerges from the pandemic, the important work to eliminate all the barriers facing women as they seek to realize their full potential must be prioritized. This will require a commitment from state leaders, businesses, and communities to take an intentional, thoughtful, and sustained approach to achieving these goals.    

The following section offers common-sense policy recommendations as well as concrete action items to which the Department of Labor will commit, towards that end.

1. Implement the recommendations of the 2020 Child Care Task Force Report.

Laying out an actionable plan to implement the Task Force’s recommendations to make child care more accessible and affordable will be critically important. As the Task Force reconvenes in 2023 and begins planning the next steps in pursuit of the various recommendations it outlined in the 2020 report, success and forward momentum will depend on strong support and a spirit of partnership from the state, the business community, local leaders, and other stakeholders across New York State. [48]  Of particular importance to this effort will be addressing viable universal child care models and taking concrete steps to link child care infrastructure and child care availability to the state’s economic development strategy.

“Businesses must understand that affordable, quality child care is an economic driver.” Kathy Granchelli – CEO, YWCA of the Niagara Frontier

2. Increase pay for low-wage workers.

New York State should enact legislation to index the minimum wage to inflation allowing the pay of low-wage workers, the majority of whom are made up of women of color, to keep up with the cost of living. Moreover, this single change can help workers manage rising inflation for decades.

In her 2024 Executive Budget, Governor Hochul advances such a recommendation.

3. Expand paid parental leave to union-represented state workforce.

Following Governor Hochul’s lead in providing 12 weeks of paid parental leave to unrepresented state workers to use for bonding with a newborn, fostered, or adopted child, state labor unions should work to achieve the same for the state’s union-represented workforce, through collective bargaining.

4. Raise awareness about the New York State Equal Rights Amendment.

The Equal Rights Amendment would add new anti-discrimination protections to the New York State Constitution. The proposed amendment adds new protected classes, explicitly prohibiting discrimination based on a person’s age, disability, ethnicity, national origin, or sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare choices. The Equal Rights amendment has already passed the legislature twice and will go to voters in 2024. State agencies should raise public awareness about this vote.

5. Require employers to report more detailed data.

Employers operating in New York State should be required to report additional data on the NYS-45. Potential new reporting elements to explore include information on hours worked, work location, occupational titles by gender, race, and ethnicity, corporate governance etc. Better quality and more detailed data will increase transparency and bolster the state’s efforts to enhance data-driven decision-making. Modernization efforts across the state and technological improvements will help facilitate efforts toward this end.

6. Modernize the Department of Civil Service testing model.

New York State must adapt to the changing labor market to attract and retain workers more effectively. To that end, Civil Service should offer all state exams online and on-demand.  Currently, a particular exam may be held only once every 3-4 years. The date a person is scheduled to sit for an exam is typically identified months in advance with little recourse should an unexpected conflict arise.

In 2021, women represented 48% of the New York State civil service workforce and earned 91 cents to the dollar of male workers.  “An analysis of the distribution of women along the salary continuum reveals that women hold the majority of jobs in the lower salary ranges, while men hold the majority of jobs in the higher salary ranges in the state workforce.”[49]

A proposed Department of Civil Service initiative detailed in the Fiscal Year 2024 New York State Executive Budget is the shift to Continuous Recruitment for the Civil Service exam. “This initiative will allow agencies to continuously recruit for a variety of titles, add to the pool of qualified candidates at more regular intervals, and create a more efficient and modernized exam process. Continuous recruitment exams offered on an ongoing basis will be held via a hybrid of online training and experience exams, multiple choice exams via remote proctoring (online), and computer-based testing centers”.[50]

7. State agencies should offer flexible work arrangements.

During the pandemic state agencies and state workers benefited from the pivot to more flexible work arrangements. Where operationally feasible, State agencies should embrace, expand and formalize family-friendly work arrangements including remote work, alternate work hours and flexible work hours. Doing so will enhance state efforts to recruit and retain women in the public sector.

8. The state should create an easy-to-use leave benefits toolkit.

The state should develop plain language reference materials that can help state workers maximize and appropriately coordinate the planned use of all available leave benefits for maternity or paternity leave.

9. Businesses should implement policies that facilitate a positive remote work experience.

One potentially positive trend from the pandemic is the promise of remote work and its impact on the gender wage gap over time. Remote work can provide more career and earning opportunities for women who must juggle work and family responsibilities, including those who can only work part-time due to child care. Programs such as ConnectAll, which seeks to modernize New York’s digital infrastructure and expand access to broadband services, will make remote work more feasible in rural areas and help women take advantage of jobs with flexible hours and locations. In addition, the state should prioritize access to training and education about digital literacy, especially for older workers. However, businesses must also recognize and develop strategies to combat the potential downside of remote work. This means tackling the negative perception that can develop when workers spend less time in the office, respecting boundaries that tend to disappear when the work location is now in the home, and the general culture of overwork that often pervades today’s workplace and certain occupations.

And as more research shows the business advantage of reasonable hours, some employers will come to question the wisdom of grueling schedules. If and when those forces gain traction, neither women nor men will feel the need to sacrifice the home or the work domain, demand for change will swell, and women may begin to achieve workplace equality with men.[51]

Action Items for the Department of Labor

1. Track, update, and post the State’s gender wage gap annually on its public website, thus creating a new Gender Pay Gap online hub.

Given the critical importance of this topic and the State’s desire to lead on this issue, timely data which will inform a current understanding of our progress is necessary and should be easy for the public to find. Towards this end the department will create an online hub for gender wage gap information. Additional resources will be housed here including information on sexual harassment prevention training and model policies, salary negotiation tools, federal data sources and links to interactive wage and occupation data tools.

2. Educate employers about new pay transparency laws and ensure adequate enforcement.

In September 2023, the pay transparency law signed by Governor Hochul will come into effect. This monumental new law will require employers to include, in good faith, the minimum and maximum annual salary or hourly range for compensation in any advertisement for a job. For decades, pay secrecy has been an effective tool in preventing women from knowing the value of their work, even when performing the same job as their male counterparts.  The Department of Labor will actively engage stakeholders and create helpful guidance to educate businesses, existing workers, and job seekers as it conducts the public outreach campaign required by this new law. After a period of focused outreach to businesses, the Department will utilize complaint data to determine if patterns of non-compliance emerge in certain industries or certain regions of the state.  That information can be utilized to inform targeted enforcement efforts, leveraging the power of the Joint Enforcement Task Force.

Related to this effort, The Department of Labor will also work with key partners to institute an effective review process to ensure appropriate transparency standards for job postings in the New York State Jobs Bank.  The Jobs Bank is a valuable resource for job seekers everywhere. With approximately 350,000 active job listings, it is imperative that these listings also reflect the spirit of the new pay transparency laws.

3. Expand and raise awareness about publicly available data on job titles and pay.

Knowing the pay range in similar positions is the starting point in most salary negotiations. The Department of Labor will work to raise awareness about information it currently publishes and about job titles and pay in each region. Future public dashboards released by the Department will focus on labor market information related to the child care industry including, employment, and wages.

4. Develop and launch a statewide paternity leave awareness campaign.

To promote progress in combatting the many societal norms that enable inequity, the Department of Labor will work to normalize paternity leave by raising awareness about what benefits are available and how paternity leave can positively impact families and the career and salary prospects of women earners. 

5. Prioritize connecting women to opportunities in the green economy.

New York’s environmental and sustainability initiatives make up approximately 17% of jobs statewide and represent a growing share of new jobs.[52] As the state pursues the goals of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, over 200,000 new jobs in the green economy are expected by 2030. [53] The proposed Office of Just Energy Transition will be situated in the Department of Labor.  As such, the Department will prioritize placing as many women as men in related job-training programs over the next ten years.

6. Develop additional resources for businesses.

The Department of Labor will develop a comprehensive toolkit that provides helpful resources for businesses to assist employers in being a part of the solution to the gender pay gap. The toolkit will consist of information on how to identify and modify workplace culture, including addressing sexual harassment, family care, gendered language, and identifying gender bias.

Our Research

Methodology

To better understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women in the workplace, the Department of Labor (Department) built upon the key themes of the Department’s 2018 report on the gender wage gap.[1] The Department used a mixed methods approach in the data collection and analysis process. Information was gathered from public hearings, semi-structured interviews, previous research, census data, and labor market data. Unless otherwise noted, wage gap calculations in this report are based on the median earnings of full-time, year-round, civilian workers, as derived from the most-recent American Community Survey done by the US Census Bureau.

The Department hosted two public hearings in January 2023 in New York City and Albany.  Each hearing included a panel of executive leaders from the Department of Labor as well as members of the Governor’s cabinet. Advocates, business leaders, researchers, and other members of the public were invited to participate in these events and to present testimony. Written comments were also solicited via a public comment period.    

In addition, the Department conducted semi-structured interviews with some of the women who offered their perspectives for the 2018 report to understand how their views on this topic have changed due to the pandemic.  

The Department conducted a quantitative analysis utilizing data sets from the U.S. Census Bureau (American Community Survey) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. One unique challenge was that the U.S. Census Bureau did not release its standard 1-year estimates from the 2020 American Community Survey (ACS) because of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on data collection.  As such, the main periods examined in this report are 2016 (the year upon which the 2018 gender wage gap report was based) and 2021 (the most current year for which reliable data are available).

Finally, the work herein reviews other relevant research, studies, and articles to round out the analysis.

State of the Gender Pay Gap

The gender pay gap in New York, as with the rest of the nation, cuts across demographics, education status, and experience levels in almost every occupation.

In New York, women in the labor force[2] who worked full-time, year-round earned the equivalent of 88.2 cents to each dollar earned by men in 2021. New York had the second smallest wage gap in the U.S., behind Vermont, and was narrower than the national average of 81.5 cents. The gap in New York shrunk from 82.7% in 2010 to 88.6% in 2015 and 2016. However, it increased slightly to 88.2% in 2021.

Women of color continue to experience the most severe gender wage gap. In 2021, Black or African American women were paid the equivalent of 67.8 cents on the dollar compared to White, non-Hispanic men. Hispanic and Latina women were paid only 62.9 cents on the dollar.

The gender pay gap has lifelong financial effects. A woman with a bachelor’s degree or higher will begin her career with a pay gap, which only grows wider throughout her lifetime. In New York, today’s wage gap would cost a woman $350,360 in diminished lifetime earnings over her 40-year working career. [3] This means she would need to work until she was age 67 to catch up with a man’s career earnings at age 60. The situation is worse for women of color. Compared to White, non-Hispanic men, a Black woman would earn $986,800 less over her 40-year career and Latinas would lose out on $1,214,240 in earnings due to the gender wage gap. Closing the gender wage gap would also lower women’s poverty rates, which in 2021 stood at 14.9% in New York [4]

Workforce Statistics

During the second half of the 20th century, the face of the American workforce shifted dramatically as women entered the labor force in large numbers. This rapid increase resulted in the women’s labor force participation rate (LFPR) in the U.S. climbing from 34%in 1950 to 57% in 2022. [5]  However, a 2021 study by the National Partnership for Women & Families (NPWF) found a lack of national family care policies are impacting women’s fuller participation in the labor market. In the U.S., 4.85 million prime working-age women are prevented from participating in the workforce, costing families $650 billion per year in lost income and lowering the national GDP by 2.9%.[6]

Things are worse for the same reasons they were bad when I spoke in 2018, child care, child care, child care, child care has gotten much more challenging because of the child care deserts and affordability.” Kathy Granchelli – CEO, YWCA of the Niagara Frontier

During the pandemic, many women had to make hard decisions, like temporarily leaving the labor market, due in large part to the inaccessibility of child care as many centers closed their doors and schools pivoted to remote learning due to COVID. From 2019 to 2021, the LFPR for women in New York dropped from 59.3% to 58.9%, while the unemployment rate nearly doubled from 4.2% to 8.2%. In 2021, over 405,000 women were unemployed, a significant increase from 207,000 in 2019.

The table below shows the total number of women in the labor force, their percentage share of the labor force, the number of unemployed women and the unemployment rate for both genders in every region of the state for 2021.

Table 1: Labor Force Status by Gender

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Prior to the pandemic, the share of women in the labor market in New York was rising, according to data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Their LFPR increased from 58.4% in 2016 to 59.3% in 2019, while the number of women in the labor force increased by 26,100. The number of employed women grew by 95,300 over that time while the number of unemployed women fell by 69,100, bringing the unemployment rate down from 5.7% to 4.2%.

Wage Gap Across the Economic Spectrum

The gender pay gap impacts women at all wage and earnings levels. Notably, the gap worsens at higher earnings levels as shown in Table 2 below. For women earning the lowest wages, the gap is smaller – representing 91% of men’s earnings at the 10th percentile, compared to a slightly smaller gap of 92% reported in 2018.

The minimum wage is partly responsible for the smaller gap at the lower wage levels – it sets a wage floor that applies to everyone. This means that people near the bottom of the distribution are more likely to make comparable wages, regardless of gender. In addition, increases to the minimum wage are more likely to impact women than men since low-wage workers are more likely to be women.

For the highest wage earners, the pay gap grows substantially: women with earnings in the 95th percentile only make 79% of what their male counterparts are paid. This represents a slight but noticeable improvement from 74% in 2016. This trend is outlined in the figure below, which shows U.S. hourly earnings by wage percentile and gender, and the resulting wage gap.

Table 2: Hourly Earnings by Gender and Percentile

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Source: Economic Policy Institute[7]

Work Hours

Differences between men and women in paid and unpaid work are a critical element of gender inequality. Women spend considerably more time than men doing unpaid household and family care work, while men spend a greater share of their time performing paid work. Women are more likely to work part-time than men, which often puts them at a disadvantage in terms of pay, benefits, stability, and opportunities for career advancement. This is not necessarily a choice: many women would prefer full-time work but end up in part-time arrangements due to the lack of full-time employment opportunities in the many low-wage service industries that employ a disproportionately high share of women. In New York, nearly 30% of employed women worked less than 35 hours per week in 2021, compared to just 18% of men.[8] Table 3, below, shows that more than 60% of part-time workers in New York State are women.

Table 3: Part-Time, Year-Round Workers

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2016-2020 ACS 5-year Public Use Microdata Sample

Typically, wage gap calculations use the median earnings of full-time, year-round, workers. This excludes nearly 1.8 million women[9] in New York who work part-time or only part of the year. Women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s earnings for all workers was 80.9%[10] in 2021 compared to 88.2% for full-time, year-round workers in New York.

Regional Disparity

The gender pay gap varies widely across the state. The three counties with the most significant wage gaps are Genesee (74.3%), Oswego (75.6%), and Jefferson (75.6%). In contrast, the counties with the smallest gaps are Bronx (98.9%), Queens (97.4%), and Hamilton (94.0%). More than half of New York’s counties have a narrower wage gap than the national average (35 of 62 counties).  Further research regarding potential explanations for this regional disparity is needed. However, there are challenges due to the lack of additional reliable occupational data by gender available at the county level that would be required for detailed analysis.

Figure 1: Map of Female Earnings as a Percentage of Male Earnings by County

Source: American Community Survey Five-Year Date Table 52414

Wage Gaps by Industry and Occupation

The gender pay gap occurs across almost all occupations and industries. Industries represent the type of company someone works for, and occupations represent the job type someone has. Male-dominated industries tend to have higher wages than industries made up mostly of female workers. The financial activities sector has the widest gender pay gap in New York at 71.2%. The gap narrowed somewhat from 68.6% in 2016. Female median earnings are higher than their male counterparts only in construction, at 104.8%. While women make up only 21.4% of the overall construction industry workforce, they primarily occupy either professional/management roles or other sales/office roles, which increases their median wage in the industry. High unionization rates may also play a role in better pay equality in the construction industry. Research has shown that unionized women make on average 23% more than non-unionized women[11]. According to a study published by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), New York State has the highest share of women workers covered by a union contract[12]. The transparency and equality provided by collective bargaining and union contracts leads to greater pay equity. Unionized women are also more likely to have paid leave, stronger employee-sponsored benefits, and protections against discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace.

Table 4: Industries with the Lowest and Highest Wage Gap

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Even though women have increased their presence in higher-paying jobs traditionally dominated by men, they continue to be over-represented in lower-paying occupations. This segregation by occupation is a major factor behind the overall pay gap.

Gender wage gaps, which exist in nearly all occupations, stem from two separate wage effects. The first, known as the “between occupation” wage gap, happens because occupations that tend to employ more women also tend to pay less. The second effect, known as the “within occupation” wage gap, happens because men tend to be paid more than women, regardless of whether the occupation is dominated by men or women.

Table 5 below shows gender pay gaps for various occupational groups in New York. Excluding natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations, where women account for only 3.8% of the workforce, the occupations with the largest gender pay gaps include sales and related occupations (71.1%), production occupations (72.1%), and protective service occupations (79.5%). The occupations with the smallest wage gaps are healthcare support occupations (95.5%), office and administrative support occupations (92.8%), and food preparation and serving related occupations (88.2%).

Table 5: Gender Wage Gap of Occupations

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The percentage of women employed in the highest paying occupations (median earnings of over $81,820) is low compared to the number of women in the workforce (48.8%). Women tend to be underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields like Architecture and Engineering (16.9%) and Computer and Mathematical (22.8%) occupations , and they are paid less than their male counterparts. Women are also underrepresented in the Legal field (39.5%) and earn 76.5% of what their male peers earn. Traditionally, the Legal field requires workers to work long and inflexible hours, which poses a challenge since many women tend to be responsible for family and child care obligations.

Conversely, the Healthcare Practitioner field is predominately comprised of women, but it has a significantly wider wage gap at 70.8%. This may be because women tend to gravitate toward lower-paying jobs and specialties within their fields that may offer more personal flexibility. For example, female doctors are more likely to work in pediatrics than more lucrative medical specialties, such as orthopedic surgery.

Table 6: Gender Wage Gap of Occupations with Median Annual Earnings Greater than $81,000

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Source: American Community Survey 2016-2020 Five-Year Public Use Microdata Sample Estimate

Education, Experience, and Age

Generally, earnings increase as years of education increase for both men and women. While women are now earning postsecondary degrees at a higher rate than men, they are still subject to a pay gap upon graduation. In New York, women with a bachelor’s degree earn 18% less than their male peers, while women with a graduate or professional degree earn 22% less (see figure 2 below); in 2016 they earned 20% less and 25% less, respectively. As a result of this pay gap, women are more likely to struggle paying down student debt.  As noted above, a contributing factor may be that many women with advanced post-secondary education are starting families at about the same time that men’s careers are advancing.

Black or African American women are burdened the most by higher education costs. According to analysis by The Education Trust[13], Black or African American women in the U.S. hold more student debt than any other group, but get a lower financial return on their investment in a college education. Black or African American women with a bachelor’s degree or higher had median earnings of $60,681 in 2020, compared to $91,805 for their White male counterparts.

Figure 2: Earnings by Gender & Education

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Source: 2021 ACS Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) 1-Year Estimates

Figure 3: Earnings by Gender & Age

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Source: 2021 ACS Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) 1-Year Estimates
Note: Medians have been interpolated.

The gender pay gap grows over a woman’s career and is widest for women 65 years and older. The widening pay gap reflects the disproportionate impact of family responsibilities on women’s careers, otherwise known as the “motherhood penalty.” Women are more likely to temporarily exit the workforce – to either raise children or care for an older relative – which results in less work experience, further reinforcing the gender wage gap. More generally, careers and career paths evolve over time. However, by the time women finish advanced schooling and begin their careers, the time to have children is biologically limited. As a result, women are often starting families at the same time when professional careers take off and become lucrative – doctors becoming specialists, or lawyers becoming private law firm partners.[14] As mentioned previously, on average, the wage gap costs women in New York $350,360 over a 40-year working career. A woman would have to work seven years longer than her male counterpart to make up this lifetime wage gap. Lower lifetime earnings make it harder for women to save for retirement. The wage gap also means that women are more likely to receive smaller Social Security checks than men. According to the Social Security Administration[15], the average monthly benefit for men ages 65 and older was $1,714 ($20,568 annually) in 2021. For women of the same age, it was just $1,378 ($16,536 annually).

Figure 4: Gender Wage Gap by Age | NYS vs USA

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Source: 2021 ACS Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) 1-Year Estimates

Race and the Gender Pay Gap

As discussed above, the gender wage gap affects all women, regardless of age, experience, or occupation, but women of color continue to suffer from the largest wage gap. The wage gap for women of color is typically compared to the wages of White, non-Hispanic men because women of color face discrimination based on both gender and race and ethnicity. Compared to the earnings of White, non-Hispanic men, the pay gap for full-time, year-round workers was more significant for women in historically underserved racial and ethnic groups than for White women. For example, in New York State, for every dollar earned by White men, Hispanic or Latina women earned 62.9[16] cents, and Black or African American women earned 67.8 cents, while White women earned 82.9 cents. Asian women are paid 88.3 cents for every dollar paid to a White, non-Hispanic man.

Figure 5: Female Median Earnings as a Percentage of Male Median Earnings within Race/Ethnicity 

No Data Found

COVID-19 Pandemic Trends Affecting Women at Work

The COVID-19 pandemic that began in March 2020 sent shock waves through the U.S. economy and labor market. Job losses totaled 22 million in the U.S during the first two months of the pandemic and the unemployment rate rose sharply, peaking at 14.7% in April 2020. New York lost nearly 2 million jobs between February and April 2020 and the unemployment rate in the State peaked at 16.5% in May 2020. The pandemic hit women particularly hard and laid bare the harsh realities for America’s working women.

The “She-cession”

C. Nicole Mason
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Women have been disproportionately impacted by job and income losses during the pandemic … The reason for this is because women are overrepresented in the hardest-hit sectors: service, leisure/hospitality, education and healthcare services.

Source: Democracy Now, “The Shecession: Women Face Staggering Job & Income Losses Amid the Pandemic’s Economic Crisis,” [17]

Early in the pandemic, women faced disproportionate impacts when much of the economy shut down. New York experienced its first COVID-19 case on March 1, 2020, and New York City, by far the most densely populated city in the nation, quickly became the epicenter of the pandemic. On March 7, 2020, the former Governor declared a disaster emergency in New York State, and on March 13, the former President declared a national emergency. In the days following, emergency actions eventually culminated in a full, 100% closure of all non-essential businesses in New York State on March 22, 2020. The public saw schools, universities, and nonessential businesses in New York and elsewhere close at an unprecedented rate. New York experienced record unemployment, and the unemployment insurance system became a lifeline to nearly 5 million New Yorkers over the course of the next three years. Women in the U.S. lost 5.5 million jobs in the first 10 months of the pandemic. This effect has been named a “she-cession” by C. Nicole Mason, President and Chief Executive of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR). Between March and April 2020, an estimated 3.5 million mothers of school-aged children left their jobs, according to research from the U.S. Census Bureau.[18] This amounted to 45% of mothers not working in the U.S. in April 2020.

School and child care closures

The sudden closing of schools and child care centers left many women with no choice but to leave their jobs. Mothers are expected to do the majority of child care and unpaid household labor thanks to long-standing gender inequities and social norms that favor a “traditional” division of labor. The expectation for women to care for children is also exacerbated by the gender pay gap. If one partner is forced to stop working, it makes financial sense for the person making less money to stay home. Even as women reenter the work force, they experience the “motherhood penalty,” losing out on pay increases and likely paid less than men with the same experience.

Shirley Leung
Boston Globe, 2020

The pandemic, by itself, isn’t hurting women’s careers. It’s merely highlighting – in bright fluorescent yellow marker – the inequities in the workplace and society that already created deep-seated disparities between men and women, from the gender pay gap to the lack of women in executive leadership roles.

Boston Globe, 2020 [19]

Job losses early in the pandemic were also most severe in industries where women, particularly Black or African American and Latina women, held a disproportionate share of jobs, such as Accommodation and Food Services. These service-sector jobs tend to be low paying, leaving these women with a smaller financial cushion to weather a sudden job loss. Generally, the longer women stay out of the workforce, the harder it is for them to get another job.

Figure 6: Industry Distribution for UI Claims

As schools and child care centers re-opened, mothers returned to the workforce and the gap in employment between men and women diminished. By January 2021, over 18.5 million mothers were working, up from 15.5 million in April, but still 1.6 million fewer than in January 2020.[20]

Stay-at-home mandates early in the pandemic forced many businesses to allow their employees to work from home if feasible. Nearly three years into the pandemic, remote work has remained a fixture of the working world. Workplace flexibility, incorporating remote work, flexible hours, and other appropriate arrangements, helps mothers balance their careers with child care responsibilities and is critical for the inclusion of women in the workforce.

Research[21] has shown the availability of remote work had a larger impact on mothers’ labor force participation during the pandemic than the availability of child care. According to the study, the hours worked of mothers of pre-kindergarten children who had no access to remote work declined by almost 18 percentage points more than fathers. But, for mothers who were able to work remotely, the gap was between two and three percentage points.

Remote work

As schools and child care centers re-opened, mothers returned to the workforce and the gap in employment between men and women diminished. By January 2021, over 18.5 million mothers were working, up from 15.5 million in April, but still 1.6 million fewer than in January 2020.[20]

Stay-at-home mandates early in the pandemic gave rise to a new economy in which businesses allowed their employees to work from home if feasible. Nearly three years later, remote work has remained a fixture of the working world. Workplace flexibility, incorporating remote work, flexible hours, and other appropriate arrangements, helps mothers balance their careers with child care responsibilities and is critical for the inclusion of women in the workforce. Research has shown the availability of remote work had a large impact on mothers’ labor force participation during the pandemic. [21]  According to the study, the hours worked by mothers of pre-kindergarten children with no access to remote work declined by almost 18 percentage points more than fathers. But, for mothers who were able to work remotely, the gap was between two and three percentage points.

However, most jobs in the U.S. economy cannot be performed remotely. According to a 2020 study,[22] only 37% of all U.S. jobs can be done at home. Most jobs in finance, corporate management, and professional and scientific services can be done remotely. In contrast, jobs in the service industry, including those at hotels, restaurants, and retail, are unable to be done from home. As a result, the availability of remote work will disproportionately benefit college-educated and higher-paid women in the workforce.

Workplace flexibility may not come without costs. A 2022 survey[23] of 200 U.S. executives revealed that 41% of respondents said remote employees would be less likely to be considered for a promotion. Elora Voyles[24], an industrial-organization psychologist, called this a “Zoom ceiling,” explaining that the bias favoring those who are in the office compared to those who are not may keep remote workers from getting promotions and leadership positions.

Lack of Affordable Child Care in New York State

The lack of affordable child care in New York State has long been a barrier preventing mothers of young children from entering the work force. According to the Economic Policy Institute, New York is ranked 6th out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia for the most expensive infant care. A typical family in New York would have to spend 22.1% of its income on child care for an infant.

The sudden closure of most child care facilities forced many mothers out of the workforce during the pandemic. More than one in four (27%) family child care providers that could serve infants and toddlers in New York City stopped operating in May 2020. Outside New York City, 28% of child care providers that could serve infants and toddlers closed, including 22% of family child care providers and 50% of child care centers that serve infants and toddlers.[25]

Approximately 65% of state-licensed child care providers stayed open as part of the essential workforce.[26] However, many were operating at only 30% of their licensed capacity due to staffing shortages and social distancing mandates.[27] New York State’s child day care services industry lost 27,100 jobs, or 34.5% of total employment, in the second quarter of 2020 compared to the previous year. As of the second quarter of 2022, employment in the state’s child day care services industry remains at 93% of its pre-pandemic level of jobs.

At a Department of Labor hearing held on January 26, 2023, Lina Moe of the Center for New York City Affairs highlighted the possibility that child care workers are choosing other lines of work that are more lucrative, including working in the fast-food industry. Nationally, child care workers’ families are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as other workers’ families.[28]

Figure 7: Year over Year change | Employment in Child Daycare Services in NYS

No Data Found

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages

Child Care Workers in New York State

The child care workforce in New York is made up almost entirely of women, who hold approximately 96% of jobs in the industry. Over half of the overall early childhood workforce identifies in racial categories other than White:

No Data Found

  • 23% identifying as Latinx;
  • 17% as Black or African American;
  • 7% as Asian;
  • 9% as other.

Despite the high cost of center-based child care, low-wage occupations continue to dominate the child care industry in New York. For example, the wages earned by two of its three most common occupations fall significantly below the overall median wage in New York State ($50,850). Child care workers, which account for 21.5% of all jobs in the child care industry in New York State, have a median wage of $31,900. Similarly, teacher assistants, which account for 21.3% of child day care services industry jobs in the state, are paid a median annual wage of $30,600. Being a teaching assistant typically requires certification by the New York State Education Department. Workers in both these occupations play a critical role in child care, and these relatively low pay levels likely contribute to high employee turnover in the child care industry.

Frontline Essential Workers in New York State

New York State’s Frontline Essential workers continued to work throughout the pandemic, risking their health to keep the economy moving, keep New Yorkers safe, and maintain their families’ finances in the face of desperate economic circumstances. According to the New York State Department of Labor, women, primarily women of color, accounted for almost two-thirds of the state’s Frontline Essential workforce (1.45 million women out of 2.25 million total Frontline Essential workers). These workers, again primarily women, were rewarded by earning almost 25% less than their non-essential counterparts.

Seher Khawaja
Deputy Legal Director and Senior Attorney for Economic Empowerment at Legal Momentum

During the pandemic, women working in essential jobs across the state, including as nurses, cashiers, restaurant workers, homecare workers, and daycare providers, took on heightened health risks without adequate pay, paid sick time, paid family leave, or healthcare to address these risks. Unfortunately, increased recognition of these injustices has yet to result in sufficient action to support those workers who put their lives on the line to sustain our communities.

Occupations providing Frontline Essential services included food service, critical commerce, healthcare, public safety, education, and infrastructure workers. Frontline Essential jobs with the highest percentage of female workers were in the educational instruction field and healthcare. Frontline Essential workers were also more diverse than Non-Frontline Essential Employees. Nearly half (49%) of Frontline Essential workers in New York State were non-White. The most racially diverse Frontline Essential occupations in New York State were Home Health and Personal Care Aides (68%); Nursing Assistants (65%); Bus Drivers, Transit and Intercity (65%); Transportation Security Screeners (64%); and Chefs and Head Cooks (64%).

The Shadow Pandemic: Workplace Protections for Victims of Domestic Violence

Violence against women increased dramatically during the pandemic, so much so that it came to be known as the “shadow pandemic.”[30] As a result of stay-at-home orders that protected individuals from infection, such isolation also put women at greater risk of being the victim of domestic violence. In March 2020, the New York City Police Department responded to a 10% increase in domestic violence reports compared to March 2019.[31] The importance of workplace protections such as Reasonable Accommodations for Survivors of Domestic Violence and Paid Safe Leave laws, both of which provide paid time off for self-care or care for family members when an employee or employee’s family member has been the victim of domestic violence, became apparent during the pandemic.

At the height of the pandemic, Legal Momentum, a national nonprofit organization that works for the legal rights of women, received a call from a woman who worked a night shift as a hospital technician. She had fled her abusive partner after he threatened her life, checked into a domestic violence shelter with her two small children, and showed up to her job the next day seeking a shift change—the type of accommodation provided for under NYC law. She was now the sole support for her children and desperately needed her employer’s assistance and understanding to manage child care while meeting curfew requirements at her shelter. Despite following the necessary steps required under local law, the hospital ignored and then swiftly denied her request, terminating her shortly thereafter. Despite her following the necessary steps required under local law, the hospital ignored and then swiftly denied her request and terminated her shortly thereafter, undermining her financial security at a time when it was vital to maintaining her family’s safety and security. Thankfully, due to strong state and local workplace protections for survivors, she was able to use these laws to assert her rights and challenge the hospital’s actions. 

This is just one of many examples of the overlapping and intolerable barriers women were forced to overcome during the pandemic, and it highlights the urgent need to dismantle them. Based on calls Legal Momentum received from women across the state and country, this client’s experience with her employer is, unfortunately, not uncommon. Many employers lack knowledge of or respect for existing legal protections and thus regularly terminate survivors shortly after they report; similarly, employers regularly deny a host of mandated protections and benefits to workers who are legally entitled to them.

Fanny Villarreal
Executive Director at YWCA of Syracuse and Onondaga County

The population we serve is all women, all survivors of domestic violence. Some of them have mental health issues and alcohol and drug addiction. But they want to regain their life, and they want to work, and they want and need support.

Mental Health

The COVID-19 pandemic had an enormous, negative impact on the mental health of people across every gender, age group, and race and ethnicity. However, the mental health of women has taken an extreme toll. 44.6% of women reported symptoms of anxiety disorder or depressive disorders from July 16 – July 21, 2020, compared to 37.0% of men, according to the National Center for Health Statistics’ Household Pulse Survey. Prior to the pandemic, in 2019, that number was 10.8% for all American adults aged 18 and over. Being forced to leave jobs to care for children and other family members led to increased anxiety, isolation, stress, and other mental health issues. Research from the Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California found that mothers experiencing sweeping and sudden changes to their daily lives were susceptible to symptoms of traumatic stress.[32] Frontline essential workers, who were predominantly women, continued to go to work despite the health risks. Healthcare workers, an essential component of the frontline essential workforce, were at a greater risk for COVID-19 and the emotional toll that came with it. The alternative, quitting one’s job and losing income, carried its own stressors on mental health. As a result, millions of workers nationally quit their jobs as the economy reopened – dubbed the “Great Resignation” – for a variety of reasons including prioritizing their own mental health and well-being. In response, an increasing number of employers are offering more resources to address workers’ mental wellness.
Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) are designed to enhance employee well-being, increase productivity, and improve morale in the workplace. According to a recent study, COVID-19 lead to increased levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. Before the pandemic, 70.4% of those using EAP services were women. This number fell slightly to 69% after the pandemic.[33]

Career Change

The pandemic may have changed how women place value in their time and work.   Approximately 10% of Americans quit their jobs to start businesses during the pandemic, with 55% of women willing to change fields compared to 44% of men.[34] One national study of women over the age of 40 who started their own small businesses during the pandemic found that while many cited job losses, child care, health concerns, or lost income as reasons to start a business, the largest group of women explained that following their passion or calling was the major impetus.[35]  These women-owned businesses varied widely, with the largest concentration in retail. About 80% of the owners were White; 10% Black or African American; and 10% Hispanic.  One-third of these women also worked a second job, and over 60% were caregivers.[36] The pandemic provided many American women with an entrepreneurial bent the opportunity to start their own business and to become their own boss. According to an AARP study, most women entrepreneurs relied on friends or family for support and cited finding capital, financing, and marketing expertise as key challengers facing their businesses. They tended to use government programs a lot less often, potentially under-utilizing those programs.[37]
Fanny Villarreal
Executive Director at YWCA of Syracuse and Onondaga County

Another thing that came out of this is that some of the women in our program are creating their own child care businesses. And they are going through the process of getting on the county list (as a child care provider).

Public Hearings

The Department of Labor held two in-person public hearings on the impact of COVID-19 on women in the workforce and the gender wage gap, the first on January 26, 2023 in New York City, and the second on January 31, 2023 in Albany. The Department heard from experts from around the state representing a wide range of perspectives, highlighting many of the themes that were discussed in the 2018 report including the need to continuously change societal norms around the unpaid and gendered labor of care, the special hardship on women who are low-income, and the amount of genuine progress New York State has made in fighting the injustice of unequal pay. The following key themes emerged:
  • Unequal Impacts: Gender equality, workers’ rights advocates, and experts from academia testified about hardships women faced during the pandemic and its impact on the workforce. This was especially pronounced among women of color and women in low-wage jobs. Lack of child care was a major factor both in women leaving the workforce during the pandemic to care for children and their subsequent delayed return to work.[38] A wide range of solutions were discussed including better pay for child care workers, gradual phase-in of universal child care, indexing the minimum wage to inflation, investing in child care as a critical infrastructure, and providing career advancement for workers.[39]
  • Persistent Challenges: Recovery from the pandemic has not been even for all worker groups. Compared to before the pandemic, New York state is still missing approximately 267,000 jobs, concentrated in occupations that are low-paying and require face-to-face interactions. This category includes workers in the direct care industry such has daycare and homecare workers where very low pay, difficult working conditions, and lack of career advancement all contribute to a lack of workers and high turnover.[40]
  • Inequity at the Highest Levels: The gender pay gap remains significant among women lawyers and engineers, two of the highest paying professions. Women lawyers make up about a quarter of lawyers who are partners, litigate in courtrooms, or hold positions of special authority such as judgeships. The causes of this include cultural bias, methodology for tracking business origination, billable hours, and lack of support and promotional opportunities. Since the pandemic, telework has offered more flexibility, but it remains unclear whether it will offer genuine advancement opportunities in the future.[41] For engineers, establishing women role models and fostering a change in mindset towards women in STEM remain important tools in supporting girls and women.[42]
  • Incremental Improvements: Genuine progress has been made in closing the gender pay gap in the last three decades.  In New York, legislation addressing salary ban and pay transparency go a long way towards promoting economic equality. However, women’s work remains undervalued and unacknowledged. This is true across professions and incomes: in low-paying, female dominated jobs such as those in child care and homecare, in higher-paying jobs such as lawyers and engineers, where the gender pay gap is the biggest, and in public civil service positions.[43] Redressing the problem requires systemic re-evaluation of pay and job titles, and attitudinal change about the value of women’s work.[44]
  • Job Types and Gender Roles: Restaurants were among the most affected industries during the pandemic. The gender pay gap in the industry manifests in the kind of work performed by men and women, and in the discrepancy in pay between front of the house and back of the house positions.[45] One Fair Wage, a campaign representing restaurant workers, stressed the need to raise wages for workers and eliminate sub-minimum wage pay associated with tipped work.[46]
  • A Public Sector Responsibility: Strong enforcement of laws already enacted remains one of the most important tools in closing the gender pay gap over the longer term. This is especially true for the newly enacted statewide pay transparency legislation which will go into effect in 2023.[47]