Key Points:
- Women, as a whole, made $217 a week less than men, or 83% of what men make.
- Wage differences were present by race/ethnicity, occupation, and education.
Women between the ages of 25-54 earned $217/week less than their male counterparts in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or roughly 83 cents for every dollar earned by a man last year, and the gap is wider for women of color and/or working mothers. While the long-term trend does show progress, the gap is now the highest it has been since 2019. The persistent gender pay gap represents a multifaceted challenge influenced by factors including occupational segregation, unequal caregiving responsibilities, and potential systemic bias.
This analysis is based on the median earnings of male and female full-time, prime-aged workers aged 25-54. While noticeable progress has been made in closing the gender pay gap, it has been slow, stalling in recent years. In 2000, a woman earned 77 cents for every $1 earned by a man, rising to 80 cents by 2003 and slowly improving to 83 cents by 2019, where it has remained since. And the gap is not wholly attributable to men working more hours than women – in 2023, women were also paid a lower hourly rate ($19.43/hour) than men ($22/hour), on average.
The male/female earnings gap exists across all populations, with women earning less than their male counterparts across every racial group, with the biggest differences observable among Asian workers. On average, as of Q4 2024, Asian men earned 23% more a week than Asian women, compared to smaller gaps of 16% for Hispanic men and women, 15% for white men and women, and 14% for Black men and women. Some of these disparities can be attributed to differences in the types of jobs and educational opportunities available to men and women of color. While the size of the wage gap may vary between demographic groups, it remains a persistent issue both within and across racial boundaries.
The gender wage gap also varies by education level, with a wider gap for those with more advanced degrees than those with less education. At the end of 2024, a man with less than a high school diploma earned 16% more than a similarly educated woman, while a man with an advanced degree earned 25% more per week than a similar woman with the same degree. These differences may be partly due to the fact that men with bachelor’s or advanced degrees tend to pursue higher-paying fields than women.
At an occupational level, the male/female pay gap is particularly pronounced within sales and professional roles. As of Q4 2024, men working in sales earned 30% more than similar women, compared to a much smaller gap of just 7% between men and women working in farming, fishing, and forestry fields. The underrepresentation of women in higher-paying roles, coupled with systemic pay disparities, continues to fuel inequality in earnings across various industries.
Steps in closing the gap
One way to potentially help close the gender pay gap is for employers to embrace pay transparency by including wage information upfront in a job posting. As of February 2025, 60% of US job postings on Indeed contained at least some salary information, up from just 18% in 2020. By including pay transparency in job postings, both men and women can access the same data when it comes time to negotiate. Additionally, published salaries for newly opened roles can help give existing employees a sense of the market value for their role, supplying the tools they need to advocate for equal pay.
The impact of childcare responsibilities is deeply intertwined with wage disparities, as the gender care gap and the gender pay gap often reinforce each other. On average, mothers tend to work fewer hours than both men (regardless of their parental status) and women without children. Women with children are also more likely than men to step away from their careers at certain key ages to focus on childcare. When women are paid less than men, it becomes more financially feasible for them to forgo wages in favor of childcare duties. On the other hand, if childcare responsibilities were more evenly distributed between parents, working parents’ hours would likely become more balanced. Labor force participation rates among men and women are broadly similar when both are teenagers (with younger women slightly more likely to have a job than men of the same age). However, the gap between male and female participation widens during early adulthood and reaches its widest after age 25 — when careers and kids both typically begin jockeying for a woman’s attention.
Policies that offer job flexibility, including remote and hybrid work options, can be crucial in helping parents manage their daily responsibilities and can be especially appealing to working mothers. In a recent survey, Indeed found that a majority of women between the ages of 35-44 (57%) who were currently employed or looking for work in 2024 applied for a job specifically because it was fully remote, compared to 42% of all respondents. Among respondents who said they explicitly sought remote work, 48% reported having children under 18 in their household.
But while remote work remains broadly desirable and beneficial for many, the percentage of job postings offering remote opportunities has declined somewhat since peaking in 2022. Remote job postings still account for 8.3% of all advertised positions, well above pre-pandemic levels. However, the decline reflects a shift back toward in-office work as the pandemic’s impact wanes — a shift that may leave some working mothers behind.
Family leave benefits are another tool employers can use to help close the wage gap. Mentions of employer-paid, family-related benefits — including parental leave, adoption assistance, and bereavement or family leave — are still uncommon in US job postings. Although the share of postings offering at least one family-related benefit has more than doubled since January 2020, these postings are still rare. Family benefits, particularly paid parental leave, can help close the gender pay gap by enabling mothers to not only spend time with their new children before returning to the workforce, rather than potentially leaving their jobs — but extending these benefits to parents of any gender could set a precedent for more equal childcare from the outset.
Conclusion
The wage gap is not a straightforward number that simply represents what women earn compared to men. The size of the gap varies depending on many factors, and addressing wage inequality is complex, especially when it involves societal attitudes toward women in the workplace and the disproportionate burden of childcare and domestic responsibilities. Solving this issue cannot be achieved through economic policy alone or simply by creating more female-friendly workplaces. It will require tackling each individual factor both on its own, and in consideration of how it intersects with others. However, incremental changes that empower women to access more opportunities and gain economic and workplace power can help move us closer to closing the gap.
Solutions like flexible work schedules, pay transparency, and paid parental leave are essential to moving the needle toward greater equality. These policies can help create a more level playing field by enabling better work-life balance, ensuring fairer compensation practices, and allowing parents — regardless of gender — to take time off without sacrificing their careers.
Methodology
We identify job postings as open to remote work if the job title or description includes terms like “remote work,” “telecommute,” “work from home,” “hybrid,” or similar language, or if the location is explicitly listed as remote. These postings include both permanent and temporarily remote jobs, though employers often don’t specify.
We calculate the remote share of postings on a daily basis. When reporting data on specific months, we present the monthly mean of the daily series.
We track benefits by tallying US job postings on Indeed that mention at least one benefit in the job posting. Data is not adjusted for seasonality. The share of postings by benefit type is limited to one job posting per benefit type.
We calculate pay transparency share in US job postings by dividing the number of unique job postings with a salary into a total count of unique advertisements in a given month. Pay information is extracted from postings published on Indeed.com. Salaries advertised as being paid daily or weekly are omitted from the analysis.
Survey data was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of Indeed from January 30 to February 3, 2025, among 1,314 U.S. adults ages 18 and older employed full-time, employed part-time, or seeking employment. The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured by using a Bayesian credible interval. For this study, the sample data is accurate to within + /- 3.2 percentage points using a 95% confidence level.
The number of job postings on Indeed.com, whether related to paid or unpaid job solicitations, is not indicative of potential revenue or earnings of Indeed, which comprises a significant percentage of the HR Technology segment of its parent company, Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd. Job posting numbers are provided for information purposes only and should not be viewed as an indicator of performance of Indeed or Recruit. Please refer to the Recruit Holdings investor relations website and regulatory filings in Japan for more detailed information on revenue generation by Recruit’s HR Technology segment.
