A new national report finds Louisiana with the biggest lifetime wage gap for women in the United States. The National Women’s Law Center based findings on projections of women’s wages spanning 40 years on the job.
The study compared median earnings of men and women who work full time. It found women earn about $10,000 a year less, and multiplied it by 40 years to represent a lifetime wage. It found women nationally are paid about $430,000 less than male workers during that span. In Louisiana, it’s worse.
Emily Martin is the center’s general counsel.
“Women stand to lose $671,840 over a 40-year career, and women of color stand to lose over a million dollars over their career, which is startling,” she said.
The nine states following Louisiana are Utah, Wyoming, North Dakota, New Hampshire, West Virginia, Michigan, Washington, Alabama, and New Jersey.
“Young women really should be paying attention to this because really this number is a number for them -- what they stand to lose if we don’t all work together to take action to close the wage gap,” she said.
Martin said another factor hitting women’s finances especially hard is that they are more likely to be working minimum wage jobs.
