How this instrument works
The gender wage gap is usually reported as the percentage by which women's earnings fall short of men's, most often using median (not average) earnings so that a small number of extremely high or low earners doesn't skew the comparison. It's typically calculated across broad groups — full-time workers nationally, for instance — which means it reflects not just unequal pay for identical work, but also differences in occupation, industry, hours, seniority, and career interruptions across the whole population being compared; it's a population-level statistic, not proof of unequal pay for the same job.
The calculation itself is a straightforward percentage-difference: subtract women's earnings from men's, divide by men's earnings, and multiply by 100. A companion figure, 'cents earned per dollar,' expresses the same underlying gap the other way around — what fraction of men's earnings women's earnings amount to — and is popular in reporting because 'women earn 85 cents for every dollar men earn' reads more concretely than '15% gap' even though the two describe the same numbers.
This calculator applies the same two-number arithmetic whether you're checking a national statistic, comparing two departments at a company, or looking at a single job title's pay bands — the formula doesn't care what population the two earnings figures represent, only that they're comparable (same time period, same earnings measure, same population scope) going in.
- Enter men's median earnings for the group or population you're comparing.
- Enter women's median earnings for the same group.
- Read the pay gap as a percentage of men's earnings.
- Read the companion figure — cents women earn per dollar men earn.
Worked example — a national median-earnings comparison
Men's median annual earnings are $60,000 and women's are $51,000 for the same population and time period. The gap is (60,000 − 51,000) ÷ 60,000 × 100 = 15%.
Expressed as cents per dollar, that's 51,000 ÷ 60,000 × 100 = 85.0 cents — women in this comparison earn 85 cents for every dollar men earn, the same 15% gap stated the other way around. That specific figure closely tracks the roughly 85-cents-per-dollar gap reported for full-time US workers in recent analyses of national earnings data.
Questions
Does a 15% pay gap mean women are paid 15% less for the identical job?
Not necessarily — a broad gender pay gap statistic, like a national or industry-wide figure, compares median earnings across an entire population, which mixes together differences in occupation, industry, seniority, hours worked, and career interruptions along with any direct pay discrimination. An 'adjusted' pay gap that controls for those factors is typically much smaller than the 'unadjusted' or 'raw' gap this kind of headline statistic reports — both numbers are meaningful, they just answer different questions.
Why use median earnings instead of average (mean) earnings?
Because a small number of extremely high earners can pull an average sharply upward without reflecting what's typical, while the median — the middle value when everyone is ranked by earnings — is far less sensitive to those outliers. Most official gender pay gap statistics, including US Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, use median earnings for exactly this reason.
Why do 'gap percentage' and 'cents per dollar' use different arithmetic?
They describe the same underlying numbers from two different reference points. Gap percentage measures the shortfall against men's earnings (100% minus the cents-per-dollar figure, roughly, though not identical algebraically since one divides by men's earnings and the other multiplies), while cents per dollar directly expresses women's earnings as a share of men's. A 15% gap and 85 cents per dollar describe the identical pair of numbers, just phrased for different audiences.
Can I use this for a gap other than gender — like a race-based or age-based earnings gap?
Yes — the formula itself is generic percentage-difference arithmetic between two earnings figures. Enter any two comparable median-earnings numbers (labeled here as men's and women's for the calculator's default framing) to compute the same gap percentage and cents-per-dollar figure for any two groups you're comparing.
Has the US gender wage gap been closing over time?
It has narrowed since the 1980s, but progress has slowed considerably in the last two decades — women earned about 81 cents per dollar of men's earnings in 2003 compared to roughly 85 cents in 2024, a modest shift over 20 years compared to the faster narrowing seen in prior decades. The exact figure also varies by age group, with younger workers generally showing a smaller gap than the workforce overall.