On “Equal Pay Day” IWF’s Carrie Lukas takes aim at a wage discrepancy that you may not have heard of:
“Department of Labor statistics that show the wage gap among full-time workers reveals a gap among those who work part-time. But this time it’s the men who are the victims. The median male part-time worker makes about 90 percent of the earnings of the median part-time woman. Their ‘Equal Pay Day’ would fall in mid-February, not April, but the concept is the same.
“Men who are enthused by things like Equal Pay Day rallies should demand answers: Why are men who work part-time being targeted for discrimination? They should picket the Department of Labor and demand that officials contact the biggest employers of part-time workers; investigations must be made into the roots of the anti-male bias that motivates their payment practices.
“Of course, this won’t happen. And most people who learn of this statistic will intuitively sense that there must be some explanation more benign than discrimination. By thinking of the individuals you know and using your common sense, you can come up with many other factors that might contribute to this outcome. Many part-time workers are young. For many, their part-time job may also be their first job. Yet we also know that many women who have previously spent years in the workforce later seek out part-time employment, particularly when they have young children.
“The Department of Labor’s data confirms these presumptions. Seventy percent of women working part-time are over age 25, compared to less than half of part-time men. It’s no surprise that the female part-time workers, who are older and more experienced, would make more than their male colleagues.
“Yet someone who looked simply at the discrepancy between the wages earned by male and female part-time workers might conclude that these men were victims of discrimination. That would be a mistake, and it’s exactly what happens in the national conversation about the wage gap among full-time workers.”
Check out the whole article here.