Wage gap widens between men and women in Fresno. Here’s a look at the data
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Women who work full-time in Fresno saw their average annual earnings rise by more than $14,000 between 2011 and 2021.
On its face, that data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest release from its 2021 American Community Survey sounds like good news.
But the figures also reveal that in actual dollars, the wage gap among working men and women widened over the past decade. The average earnings for men in Fresno grew by more than $19,000 between 2011 and 2021.
The average earnings for men in Fresno in 2011 were estimated at $52,372 per year. By 2021, that had climbed to $71,383. Over the same period, women’s average annual earnings went from $43,318 to $57,803.
The gap between what men and women earn in Fresno climbed from just over $9,000 in 2011 to $13,580 by 2021.
Besides the dollar values, the percentage difference in average earnings between men and women also increased slightly over the decade.
The women’s average salary in Fresno in 2011 was about 83% of what men earned. In 2021, that average had slipped to about 81% of what men were making.
Similar growth in the gap in dollars between men and women also showed up in California’s statewide average and the national average.
The difference in average annual earnings between men and women in California was just under $15,000 in 2011; by 2021, the gap had increased to more than $20,000.
Nationwide, the gap between men and women in 2011 was about $17,500, but rose to about $20,800 in 2021.
“The gap between what women and men are paid persists year over year, indicating that the reasons for the gender pay gap are systemic and a reflection of how society values the work of women less than men,” payroll services firm Payscale declared earlier this year in its 2022 State of the Gender Pay Gap Report.
“There remains a disparity in how men and women are paid, even when all compensable factors are controlled for, meaning that women are still being paid less than men due to no attributable reason other than gender,” the report authors added.
In Fresno, the gender pay gap persists despite women having a slight advantage in educational attainment over men. About 74% of women over the age of 25 had at least a high school diploma in the 2011 Census data, compared to less than 71% of men. The differences had narrowed by the 2021 survey, with 80.4% of women and 79.8% of men having at least a high school diploma.
In 2011, slightly more men than women in Fresno had bachelor’s degrees. That has reversed over the decade, with more than 27% of women holding at least a bachelor’s degree, while less than 25% of men had a four-year college degree.
The percentage of Fresno households that receive some form of cash public assistance from the government fell from 8.2% in 2011 to 6.5% in 2021. The average amount of cash assistance for those households rose from just over $5,000 per year in 2011 to more than $6,100 in 2021.
Over the same period, reliance on benefits from CalFresh, the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as food stamps, remained substantial in Fresno. About one in five households received SNAP benefits in 2011, and that rose to almost one out of every four households by 2021.
The Payscale analysis, which draws from crowdsourced data, is limited to workers who have college degrees.
The causes of the gender pay gap “stem from perceptions — conscious or unconscious — that people have about the value of women’s work versus men’s work and the types of work that women are suited for,” the Payscale report states. “These perceptions lead to women being funneled into lower paying positions, often on the presumption that women do not have to work or that the work they do should relate to childcare, homemaking, and nurturing.”
“It is also worth noting that work designated as ‘women’s work’ is also perceived as less valuable — unless men enter those occupations,” the authors added.
“For example, women were the primary ‘computers’ but computing positions earned low wages until men entered the field,” according to the report. “Conversely, when women enter fields previously dominated by men, the pay drops, which has happened with parks and recreation as well as design and other occupations.”
This story was originally published September 27, 2022 at 5:30 AM.
