The United States Census Bureau has recently released new data on the characteristics of Americans with bachelor’s degrees and their median annual earnings, including information on the persistent gender pay gap between men and women.
In 2022, 35.7 percent of adults over the age of 25 in the United States held a bachelor’s degree or higher. Among these individuals, 47.2 percent were men and 52.8 percent were women. Men with bachelor’s degrees were particularly overrepresented in the fields of engineering, computer science, finance, and economics, while women were significantly overrepresented in psychology, education, social work, nursing, and family and consumer sciences. Men and women were nearly equally represented in biology, accounting, and marketing.
Among all Americans with a bachelor’s degree or higher, women earn about 70.8 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts. Across all fields of study analyzed in the Bureau’s report, including those that are female-dominated, women earn less, on average, than men in their same discipline. For example, women represent some 71 percent of all Americans with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. However, they earn just 73.7 cents for every dollar earned by men with the same degree. The smallest relative difference in earnings between men and women was for social work degree holders, with women earning about 90.5 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts.