Wage gap closing, but women still paid 20% less
Women on average made 20% less than men in Maine’s eight largest communities, a wage gap that has narrowed slightly since the previous reporting period.
The Portland Press Herald reported U.S. Census Bureau data released Thursday that shows women in Maine communities with more than 20,000 residents earned $35,122 on average from 2009 to 2012. Men earned $44,212 on average for that period. That means women make around 79 cents to every dollar earned by a man, one cent ahead of the national average for women. For the period from 2007-2009, women in Maine made an estimated 77.5 cents to every dollar a man earned.
The latest figures from the American Community Survey averaged earnings estimates from Portland, South Portland, Biddeford, Sanford, Brunswick, Bangor, Lewiston and Auburn. The data shows larger wage gaps in Sanford, Brunswick, Auburn and Lewiston and smaller gaps in Biddeford, South Portland, Portland and Bangor.
Glenn Mills, chief economist for the Maine Department of Labor’s Center for Workforce Research and Information, cautioned that the latest data set has a large margin of error for certain areas.
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