The gender pay gap exists in every state and nearly all of the country’s congressional districts.
But women in New York state and Delaware are the closest to reaching pay equity with their male counterparts, while those Wyoming appear to be the farthest: Female workers there make a mere 64 cents for every dollar earned by a man, according to the National Women’s Law Center.
With Equal Pay Day coming on Tuesday, you can find out where your state stands. Check out The National Women’s Law Center’s map below, which represents a state-by-state break down of the pay gap.
Emily Martin, general counsel and vice president for workplace justice at the NWLC, told Coins2Day that there’s a significant correlation between the each state’s minimum wage and the pay disparity there—which is why the map also includes the local minimum wage. For example, New York state has a minimum wage of $9.70—about $2.45 more than the federal minimum. And since women are typically overrepresented in low-paying jobs, this pay increase—albeit slight—helps to narrow the gap. But Martin said it’s the federal minimum cash wage for tipped workers that actually has a more significant effect on the pay gap in the United States.
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This wage—which has stayed at $2.13 for the last 25 years—is the amount employers can pay their tipped employees, such as servers, as long as that amount plus their tips equal the federal minimum minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The poverty rates for tipped workers are twice as high as the rates for workers overall, according to one study. And since women make up two thirds-thirds of tipped workers in the U.S., they’re typically hit the hardest. So when states like New York and Delaware require higher minimum cash wages, this helps narrow the gap.
Martin said the occupational differences between men and women in each state is also a contributing factor to the different gaps. For instance, states with a wider pay gap may have a dominant industry that is largely filled by men. “Driving the wage gaps in certain states is occupational segregation,” she said. “The gap is narrower is New York because there aren’t as many instances of a dominated industry.”
