Gender Pay Gap Infographic (U.S., 2025)

What this graphic shows

Figure 1, the Hundred-Cent Line, plots 132 U.S. occupations by two numbers: how much of the job's full-time workforce is female, and how much the typical woman in the job earns for each dollar the typical man earns. If pay were equal, the dots would sit on the dashed line at 100 cents. In 2025, 125 of them sat below it. Women's median weekly pay was higher in only 7 occupations, including transportation managers and school and career counselors.

The gap holds at both ends of the chart. Truck drivers are 6% women and earn 73.9 cents per man's dollar. Registered nurses are 86% women and earn 79.8 cents. Secretaries and administrative assistants, 91% women, earn 72.4 cents. Among the jobs shown, paralegals and legal assistants have the widest gap, at 61.5 cents.

The big picture: 82 to 84 cents

Two federal surveys measure the overall gap in slightly different ways. The Census Bureau compares median annual earnings of people who worked full time all year: in 2025, women earned 83.9 cents for every dollar men earned, up from 80.6 cents in 2024. The Bureau of Labor Statistics compares median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers: $1,089 for women and $1,326 for men in 2025, or 82.1 cents on the dollar.

Six decades, most of it since 1980

In 1960 women working full time, year-round earned 60.7 cents per man's dollar. Twenty years later the figure was 60.2 cents; it fell as low as 56.6 cents in 1973. The ratio then rose quickly, reaching 73.7 cents by 2000, a gain of 13.5 cents in two decades. The next 25 years added 10.2 cents. The total change from 1960 to 2025 is 23.2 cents.

Where the gap opens: age, parenthood and hours

Young women earn close to what young men earn. In 2024, full-time women aged 20 to 24 earned 90.9 cents per man's dollar and those aged 25 to 34 earned 88.3 cents. The figure drops to 81.1 cents at ages 35 to 44 and to 76.6 cents at 55 to 64. These are different groups of people measured in the same year, so the pattern reflects both career stage and the different histories of older and younger cohorts.

Parenthood tracks the same split. Fathers with children under 18 at home had median weekly earnings of $1,469 in 2024, 25% more than men without children ($1,179). Mothers earned $1,090, 7% more than women without children ($1,022). Mothers earned 74.2 cents per father's dollar.

Hours explain part of the difference. Among full-time workers, 21.1% of men usually work more than 40 hours a week, compared with 12.2% of women. Comparing only people who usually work exactly 40 hours, women earn 86.9 cents per man's dollar.

What doesn't close it: education

A degree raises pay for both sexes but does not narrow the ratio. Among full-time workers 25 and older, women with a bachelor's degree or more earned 77.6 cents per dollar earned by men with the same education in 2024. Women without a high school diploma earned 84.1 cents per dollar of men without one.

How the U.S. compares

The OECD measures the gap as the difference between men's and women's median earnings as a share of men's. On that basis the U.S. gap was 17.3% in 2024, against 10.1% for the OECD as a whole. It was wider than in Canada (16.5%), Germany (13.5%), the United Kingdom (13.1%) and France (7.0%), and narrower than in Japan (20.7%) and Korea (29.0%).

Methodology & caveats

"Cents per man's dollar" is the published women's-to-men's earnings ratio, written as cents: a ratio of 82.1% is shown as 82.1¢. All figures are medians, not averages, and are not adjusted for hours worked, experience, occupation or other characteristics; they measure the raw gap, not pay discrimination for the same work.

Figure 1 uses BLS Current Population Survey table 39 (2025 annual averages). For each detailed occupation with published medians for both sexes, data.co divided women's median weekly earnings by men's, and women's full-time workers by all full-time workers. BLS's 2025 annual averages are 11-month averages that exclude October 2025, when the survey was not conducted during the federal government shutdown; BLS notes they are not strictly comparable with other years. Medians for individual occupations come from survey samples and carry sampling error, which is larger for small occupations.

Figure 2 uses Census table P-40, based on the CPS Annual Social and Economic Supplement: median annual earnings of full-time, year-round workers 15 and older. Where Census publishes two values for a year after a change in method (2013 and 2017), the series uses the newer one. Figures 3, 5, 6 and 7 come from BLS's report on women's earnings in 2024, the latest edition with age, parent, hours and education detail; they are 2024 annual averages of weekly earnings and are not directly comparable with the 2025 figures. The parent and hours percentages are data.co calculations from the report's tables 7 and 5.

Figure 4 uses the OECD gender wage gap dataset (median measure), retrieved through the OECD's data API. Countries use different national surveys and definitions, and some figures are for full-time employees only, so small differences between countries should not be over-read.