Wage gap for Colorado women is smaller than national average
The gap is measured using median weekly earnings for full-time or salaried employees.
Let’s not sugarcoat this too much though, Colorado women still earn 82.8 percent of what their male counterparts earn, according to a new release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
So that means that Colorado is only 1.7 percent above the national average when it comes to the wage gap for full-time and salaried workers.
In fact, this isn’t even the smallest that our state wage gap has ever been. In 2003, Colorado women earned 84.3 percent of what their male counterparts did.
(Via BLS)
Most states in 2015 still have a gap somewhere between the high seventies or mid-eighties. The most equitable state in our union is Hawaii, according to the BLS, where women earn 87.9 percent of what men do. Our neighbor to the north, Wyoming, had the biggest difference. Women there earn only 69 percent of what men do.
One thing to keep in mind is that these estimates partly reflect what types of jobs are available in the state. In other words, if the state has lots of jobs in fields with larger gender pay disparities, like, say the technological field, then that will impact the state’s overall gap.