This equal pay day, study finds NJ ranking could be better

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To commemorate Equal Pay Day – this year, April 2 – the Rutgers Center for Women and Work at the School of Management and Labor Relations is reminding residents that New Jersey could do better when it comes to pay equity.

On Monday, the Center announced that although the Garden State is on par with national statistics which find the average woman in the U.S. earns 80 cents for every dollar earned by a man, our overall ranking nationwide as calculated by the National Women’s Law Center is No. 25.

For comparison, our neighbor New York comes in at No. 3. And, in that state women’s average earnings are 88 cents for every dollar earned by a man.

“The typical millennial woman in the U.S. can expect to lose $1 million over her lifetime as a result of the gender wage gap, and this amount is even larger for minority women,” said Professor Yana Rodgers, an economist and faculty director of the Rutgers Center for Women and Work.

Rodgers specifically pointed toward the “mommy tax,” explaining the consequences women who have children face for taking lower-paying jobs that provide them with more flexibility, or for leaving the workforce altogether to care for those children to subsequently return to a lower-paying position. Though the gap has gotten smaller over time due to government policies, she added, more needs to be done.

The NWLC analysis also revealed that the earnings gap varies widely by demographic group. Broken down, the state’s overall 25th-place ranking becomes 51st for Latinas, 42nd for both African-Americans and Whites (Non-Hispanics), 36th for Native Americans, and 6th for Asians.

Elaine Zundl, research director of the Rutgers Center for Women and Work, described women’s employment in New Jersey as “a tale of two states.”

“While many Asian women work in higher-paying industries such as technology and scientific research, Latina women are disproportionately concentrated in low-wage work in the retail and food service sectors,” she said in a release.

However, Zundl went on, it bears remembering that Asian women still make 12 percent less than male counterparts.