Working women are doing great, except for the pay

For male workers, the short-term news about wages is good but the long-term news isn’t. For female workers, it’s the other way around. As for the gender pay gap — well, it’s complicated.

Men experienced a significant real wage increase last quarter, up 1.7% from the previous quarter. For women, wages fell slightly, by 0.2%. The result is a further widening of the gender pay gap, which had been narrowing but has been stubbornly persistent in recent years. In the medium term, however, women are doing slightly better than men — their real wages are up 3.6% from last year, compared to 3.5% for men. And over the long term, the labor market is in their favor.

That doesn’t mean the gender pay gap will go away, however. In fact, it may even grow.

On balance, the post-pandemic economy was good for women. Between caregiving and the nature of job loss during the pandemic, women experienced more unemployment. Afterward, however, they bounced back stronger. The female employment-to-population ratio is nearly the same as it was before the pandemic, and it’s not far off its peak before the financial crisis. Male employment, meanwhile, falls with each recession and never fully recovers. It is currently 1.9 percentage points below its pre-pandemic rate.

But there are jobs, and there are wages. In the past, more women working generally meant women making more money — and the wage gap narrowed. The female-to-male pay ratio for full time workers — also called the gender pay gap — has gradually been closing over the last three decades. There are quarters when it does not, such as this most recent one, and sometimes these periods last for even longer. But they don’t change the fact that, over time, the wage gap is narrowing.

What is worrisome is that the pace of that change seems to be slowing. The gap has barely moved since the early 2010s, with women earning just above 80 cents for every dollar a man does. This most recent blip may represent a shift in the labor market — maybe some of the layoffs in the public sector this year were disproportionately women. The unemployment rate for Black women has also risen this year. But it’s too soon to tell if these changes are permanent.

What’s more certain is that if the labor market continues to weaken, men will be hurt more — because they tend to work in sectors tied to the business cycle, such as manufacturing and construction, both of which are more likely to be affected by tariffs. Longer term, with an aging population and the rise of AI, there will probably also be more job growth in care industries that women tend to work in.

How will all this affect the gender pay gap? One reason women are paid less is that they take time off from work to have and care for children. Even when they go back to work, they need more flexibility. The biggest gender gap tends to be in jobs that pay very well but require long hours, such as corporate law.

Somewhat pejoratively, some economists call these "greedy jobs": The employers want their employees to be available at all times, and reward those who are. That said, there is no denying that employers value workers who put in long hours — or that more flexible hours are a workplace benefit like any other, one which poses costs to employers.

Better access to low-cost child care probably won’t change this. Some of the biggest pay gaps are seen in well-educated women with high-earning spouses. These women can afford child care, but they still work much less once they have children, presumably because they want to be an active presence in their children’s lives.

It might still be good policy to make child care more affordable, of course, because lower-income Americans are struggling to pay for it. But it’s unlikely it will do much to narrow the gender pay gap. Nor will it help close the gap if men continue to struggle and drop out of the labor market. That would create a labor market with relatively more productive men, with more earnings potential.

And thus the U.S. may find itself with a truly perverse result in an economy full of them: Women have more opportunities than ever, and more women than ever are working — and yet they still get paid less than men.

This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Allison Schrager is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering economics. A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, she is author of "An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk."