Federal Worker Pay Gap Narrowing, Still Disproportionally Impacts Certain Groups of Women
The overall pay gap between men and women in the federal workforce has “narrowed considerably” from 19 cents on the dollar in 1999 to 7 cents in 2017, according to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report analyzing Office of Personnel Management (OPM) data.
The pay gap in 2017 was widest for Hispanic and Latina women, Black women, American Indian and Alaska Native women at 9 to 12 cents less than White men. For White women, the pay gap was 7 cents, and for Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women it was 4 cents on the dollar. The pay gap was higher for women with lower levels of education and lower in agencies with larger shares of women in their workforce.
GAO acknowledged its limited ability to explain the pay gap’s continued persistence, stating it could attribute only 1 cent of the overall 7 cent pay gap in 2017, to “measurable factors” related to pay. GAO characterized the remaining 6 cents of the pay gap as “unexplained,” while acknowledging it may due to discrimination, individual choices, and other factors not captured by the data GAO relied upon to issue its report.
In addition to OPM data, GAO requested data from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on promotions by gender, race, and ethnicity. However, GAO found the data the EEOC provided were “not sufficiently complete.” EEOC officials said one cause of the incomplete data was due to the demographic information reporting being optional for promotion applicants. GAO responded critically, urging the EEOC to take “steps to assess and improve the quality of these data in a timelier manner.” The EEOC neither agreed or disagreed with the recommendation, per GAO’s report.
Despite not knowing the reasons for the persistent pay gap, GAO reported optimism about the future, noting the pay gap in 2017 was smaller among recent hires. This “could indicate that the gender pay gap in the federal workforce will narrow further in the future."
