A think tank continues to shed light on what is called the "wage gap" between male and female workers. The new focus involves the difference between the life choices of male and female college graduates.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, young men right out of college are paid more than their female peers. An email from EPI goes on to say that young men with a college degree earn an average hourly wage of $20.94 early in their careers, while their female counterparts earn an average hourly wage of $16.58. That equates to a $9,000 annual wage gap for full-time workers.
"The best way to close the gender wage gap for people of all educational backgrounds is for all working people to see real wage increases, with women's wages increasing at a faster rate than men's," says EPI.
Carrie Lukas, managing director at Independent Women's Forum, considers this another example of "very cherry-picked statistics" that do not tell much about the role that discrimination plays in the workforce.
"And certainly discrimination is what EPI is implying," Lukas says. "The problem in that is that they aren't comparing two recent graduates who are holding the same jobs, working for the same company or even in the same industry. Rather, they're just taking the average female college graduate and comparing her to the average male college graduate."
Lukas doesn't consider that very useful because it ignores other more personal factors.
"We all know that men and women often make different choices about what to study during college and what careers to pursue after college,” she tells OneNewsNow. “And there are big differences in what some of those jobs pay and how they compensate their workers.
"So this really is another very misleading statistic – and it's really not helping an honest discussion of the situation that men and women face in the economy."
EPI offers information on the wage gap, as does IWF.