How this instrument works
A pay gap can be reported two different ways, and they answer slightly different questions. "Gap percent" asks: how much smaller is Salary B than Salary A, as a share of Salary A? "Cents on the dollar" asks a related but distinct question: for every dollar Salary A earns, how many cents does Salary B earn? The two aren't simply each other's complement in a confusing way — cents-on-the-dollar plus gap-percent add up to exactly 100, but people still routinely mix them up, quoting a gap percentage as if it were the cents figure or vice versa.
This calculator works on any two salaries you give it — it doesn't know or care whether Salary A and Salary B represent men and women, two job offers, two departments, or two candidates. That's deliberate. The most commonly cited pay-gap statistic, the aggregate US gender pay gap, is a genuinely moving target: the Census Bureau's own year-round full-time earnings ratio was 84 cents on the dollar in 2022, drifted to 83 in 2023, then fell again to 80.9 in 2024 — its second consecutive annual decline. Rather than bake a single stale percentage in as the "real" answer, this tool lets you plug in the two numbers you actually care about and does the arithmetic honestly.
The illustrative defaults (a $55,000 and a $46,000 salary) land close to the widely repeated "84 cents" aggregate figure, which is still the number you'll see cited most often in the media even though the Census Bureau's most recent measurement has moved below it. Swap in your own two figures — a raise negotiation, a job offer comparison, a department's average pay by group — and the same two formulas apply.
- Enter Salary / wage A — the baseline you're comparing against.
- Enter Salary / wage B — the group or figure being compared to A.
- Read Pay gap (%) — how much smaller B is than A, as a percentage of A. A negative value means B is actually higher than A.
- Read cents on the dollar — how many cents B earns for every $1 A earns. 100 means exact parity.
Worked example — the widely cited ~84-cents figure
Using the illustrative defaults, $55,000 (Salary A) versus $46,000 (Salary B): gap % = (55000 − 46000) / 55000 × 100 = 9000/55000 × 100 = 16.3636%. Cents on the dollar = 46000/55000 × 100 = 83.6364 — close to the "84 cents" figure widely quoted from the US Census Bureau's full-time, year-round earnings comparison, though that specific ratio has since fallen to 80.9% as of the Bureau's most recent (2024) release.
Notice the two results always add to 100: 16.3636 + 83.6364 = 100 exactly. That's not a coincidence — cents-on-the-dollar is just 100 minus the gap percentage, since both express the same $46,000-versus-$55,000 comparison from two different angles. If B ever exceeds A, the gap percentage goes negative and cents-on-the-dollar climbs past 100, correctly flagging that B is now ahead rather than behind.
Questions
What's the difference between "gap percent" and "cents on the dollar"?
They're two views of the same comparison. Gap percent asks how much smaller B is than A, as a share of A: (A−B)/A×100. Cents on the dollar asks how many cents B earns per dollar A earns: (B/A)×100. The two always sum to exactly 100 — a 16% gap means B earns 84 cents on the dollar, not a separate, unrelated number. People frequently misquote one figure as if it were the other, so it's worth checking which one a source is actually reporting before comparing it to this tool's output.
What is the current US gender pay gap?
It depends on the source and methodology, and it moves year to year — there is no single fixed answer. The US Census Bureau's full-time, year-round earnings ratio was 84% in 2022, 82.7% in 2023, and fell to 80.9% in 2024 (its second consecutive annual decline), per the Bureau's own September 2025 release. Pew Research Center, using a different methodology (median hourly earnings across full- and part-time workers), reported women earning 85% of men's pay in 2024. Neither figure is "more official" than the other — they measure slightly different things, which is exactly why this calculator lets you plug in whichever two numbers you're actually trying to compare.
Can I use this for something other than the gender pay gap?
Yes — the calculator has no idea what Salary A and Salary B represent. It's the same two-number ratio whether you're comparing a raise offer to your current pay, two competing job offers, your department's average salary to another department's, or any other pair of dollar figures. Enter whichever two numbers you're actually comparing.
Why does my gap percentage come out negative?
That's not an error — it means Salary B is actually higher than Salary A, not lower. Since gap % = (A−B)/A×100, a B that exceeds A makes the numerator negative. In that case, cents-on-the-dollar comes out above 100 too (for example, 110), correctly showing B out-earning A by 10%.
Why do Census, BLS, and Pew all report different pay-gap numbers?
Because they're measuring different things: full-time-only versus all workers, annual versus weekly versus hourly earnings, median versus mean, and different survey years and samples. None of these methodological choices is wrong — they just answer slightly different questions, which is why the widely repeated "84 cents" figure, a Census full-time/year-round annual-earnings statistic from a couple of years back, doesn't always match the most current release or a different organization's number for the same year.