The wage gap among male and female workers is expected to last until 2057, according to new research from the Institute for Women's Policy Research.
This is one year beyond previous IWPR research that found the gap would close in 2056. The additional year can be attributed to the slow economic progress made in the past few years, IWPR finds.
Since the 1960s, the wage gap has been diminishing; however, progress slowed during the 1990s, IWPR reveals. In the past decade, little progress in the wage gap has also been made.
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Of U.S. workers employed full time throughout the year, women made 77 cents for each dollar earned my men in 2011, IWPR finds. Men also make more than women in the most common roles.
Based on an IWPR analysis of weekly income for full-time workers, the wage gap actually increased in 2012. While the ratio of women to men's median weekly full-time earnings dropped to 80.9 percent in 2012, a decline from 82.2 percent in 2011, the wage gap grew among all major race and ethnic groups. The recent shift for women could be attributed to the increase in lower paying jobs and loss of public-sector jobs.
"We might be living in space by the time women earn the same as men," says Heidi Hartmann, Ph.D., president of IWPR. "With women now nearly half the labor force and breadwinners in a large number of families, the wage gap should already be a relic of the past."
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