Breaking down the gender wage gap in Utah: How much of it is due to discrimination, and what can be done?

I think it’s important to accurately describe a problem in order to solve it.

A perfect example of that is the gender wage gap. Many of the headlines you read are about how large the wage gap is, with the most recent reports saying the median woman in Utah makes 73 cents for every dollar paid to the median man. Advocates have created a holiday called “Equal Pay Day,” representing the number of days a woman works “for free” in an average year in order to match a man’s salary; this year, it took place on March 12.

The numbers are designed to shock you and they probably should — they are true.

But conservative advocates on the other side have a valid point: Once you adjust for controllable factors like occupation, experience, and education, the difference between the sexes shrinks dramatically. And they’ve used that to argue that state laws requiring equal pay shouldn’t be passed.

Here’s my thesis: The strength of both arguments detracts from solving the real situation.

Utah has the second-largest pay gap in the nation, according to U.S. census data, but only a fraction of that is due to employer discrimination. That employer discrimination needs to be addressed. The remaining amount of the pay gap comes from various societal and cultural phenomena. Those also need to be addressed.

Let’s dig in.

The current situation

Payscale is a company that tracks pay structure and makes recommendations to businesses on how they can make their wages competitive in the labor marketplace. Overall, 627,000 people have taken Payscale’s survey over the last two years about how much they make, their occupation, and other relevant factors. That’s an impressive sample size, though one the company admits is likely skewed toward those with a college degree.

Here’s what the survey found as the median wage gap among all 50 states.

As you can see, Utah women typically make just 75 cents on the dollar compared to Utah men. That’s also quite close to the 73.1 cent average reported by the Census Bureau, which is promising from a data point of view.

But what happens if you control for every compensable factor? Match job to job, experience to experience, education to education, and so on? This is the kind of data that companies like Payscale can have that the Census Bureau doesn’t.

The gap significantly shrinks — now Utah women make 97 cents to the dollar compared to Utah men.

The whole Payscale report is worth reading. It further breaks down the controlled and uncontrolled data by job, industry, race, education, age, work-from-home status, and much more. Some jobs, like truck drivers and religious directors, still have massive wage gaps even if you account for every factor.

Removing the discrimination portion of the wage gap

There are other estimates of the discrimination portion of the wage gap in Utah that are larger than 3%. For example, one University of Utah thesis put it at 14%. I think, given the Payscale tilt toward college-educated workers, that 3% is likely an underestimation. But let’s just go with 3%, for the sake of argument.

A 3% gap in pay simply due to discrimination is still hugely significant and needs to be addressed. That Utah women are being bilked out of thousands of dollars in salary per year needs to change.

Forty-three states in the nation have an equal pay law. Utah isn’t one of them. We’re the only state in the intermountain region not to have such a law, in fact. (Utah State University has an excellent report on the laws in all 50 states.)

What Utah does have is a wage anti-discrimination law. So what’s the difference? As always, it’s in the details.

Let’s choose Idaho as the counter-example — a state just as or more conservative than Utah. Utah’s law, meager as it is, exempts specific religious entities and any employer with fewer than 15 employees, or any employer asking people to work less than 20 weeks in a year. That’s a lot of employers who are allowed to discriminate! Idaho’s law has no such exemptions.

In Idaho, those discriminated against are allowed to and encouraged to take up a lawsuit in a relevant court. Utah’s law, meanwhile, forces those with a claim to go through the Utah Antidiscrimination and Labor Division of the Utah Labor Commission.

If an employee wants to sue their employer in Utah, they would have to get permission from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission before filing a case in federal court. But the UALD is the only process allowed under Utah law.

That’s a big deal because the UALD has proven to have trouble enforcing the law. A 2017 audit revealed that the division rules in favor of the employee just .7% of the time. In nearby states, the average is about 5.3%. That’s an especially big deal for those who lose their claims: Idaho’s law also prevents retaliation by employers on employees who seek action under their equal pay law, which Utah’s law doesn’t.

Utah’s law also has a statute of limitations, asking workers to file claims within 180 days of the discriminatory act. Idaho’s law is three years.

Maybe I can appeal to Utah’s Legislators via their competitive instincts: There is no reason for Idaho to have a better law than Utah on this matter. You’re gonna allow Idaho to keep things fair while Utah languishes? Those guys up north? Those wackadoodles play on blue football fields and are proud of potatoes! We can’t lose to them!

Addressing other factors

But the truth remains that the largest portion of Utah’s wage gap isn’t due to employer discrimination alone.

I thought this thesis from Curtis Miller at the U.’s economics school was well done. Essentially, using census data and fancy analytics, it tries to extract which causes can explain Utah’s wage gap. The different industries in which men and women work? The choice of occupation within an industry? Is it different levels of experience or other qualifications, referred to as an “endowment gap?” Overtime hours worked?

According to Miller, the endowment gap and industry are the largest factors. Interestingly, Miller’s analysis of the national data doesn’t show an endowment gap between men and women — if anything, women are more likely in their fields of interest to have experience or other qualifications nationally, but in Utah, the reverse is true. (Industry of employment differences are still a large driver of the wage gap nationwide and in Utah.)

As you probably know, Utah women are more likely to be mothers than those in other states. But in wage analysis, there’s what’s called the “motherhood penalty.” Mothers are more likely to take time off of work than fathers after the birth of a child, which in itself can lead to fewer opportunities for career advancement.

But even among those who take the same amount of time off work, the perceptions are different. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’s report on the wage gap in Utah noted that mothers were also nearly twice as likely as fathers to say taking time off had a negative impact on their careers. “Among those who took leave from work in the past two years following the birth or adoption of their child, 25 percent of women said this had a negative impact at work, compared with 13 percent of men,” the report says.

There’s an education gap in Utah that doesn’t exist in other states. Nationally, more women get graduate degrees than men, by a 13% to 12.4% score. In Utah, 9.3% of Utah women and 14.1% of Utah men earn graduate degrees. Those with higher degrees generally make more money. This, too, explains a statistically significant part of the gap.

Finally, the choice of an occupation within a profession represents a small portion of the gap in Utah. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’s report notes that women make up two-thirds of those who make minimum wage or just over it, for example.

But age, citizenship status, overtime hours worked, and public vs. private sector status didn’t measurably contribute to Utah’s wage gap, according to Miller’s work.

In the end, we can make inroads in these issues. Utah should get with the times and pass a comparable equal pay law to other states. Then, it should make strides in supporting women in achieving higher levels of education and higher-paying industries.

Breaking down the wage gap into its component parts doesn’t serve to minimize it — in fact, it serves to identify places where we can make real changes, especially at the legislative level. Let’s push these improvements forward.

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