Just how much of a setback was the COVID-19 pandemic for U.S. working women?
Although women who lost or left their jobs at the height of the crisis have largely returned to the workforce, a recent finding points to the price many paid for stepping back: In 2023, the gender wage gap between men and women working full time widened year over year for the first time in 20 years, according to an annual report from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Economists trying to make sense of the data say it captures a complicated moment during the disjointed post-pandemic labor market recovery when many women finally returned to work full time, especially in hard-hit low-wage industries where they are overrepresented like hospitality, social work and caretaking.
The news is not all bad: Wages rose for all workers last year, but faster for men. And while the gender wage gap rose, it’s on par with what it was in 2019 before the pandemic hit.
In 2023, women working full time earned 83 cents on the dollar compared to men, down from a historic high of 84 cents in 2022. The Census Bureau called it the first statistically significant widening of the ratio since 2003.
That’s a reversal from the previous five years when the ratio had been narrowing—a trend that may have partly been driven by average median earnings for women rising because so many low-wage women had been pushed out of full-time jobs.
S.J. Glynn, the Labor Department’s chief economist, says it’s too soon to tell whether 2023 was a blip or the start of a worrisome new trend for the gender wage gap. But she says that even a reversion to the prepandemic status quo is a reminder of how far behind women were in the first place, and shows how the pandemic slowed the march toward gender equity.
