Rutgers ranks among top 20 equal pay schools as women's wages stagnate in NJ
Women's wages in New Jersey stagnated last year as disparities between their male counterparts persist.
Earlier this year, a report comparing the earnings of male and female graduates six years after they first enrolled in college ranked Rutgers 17th among the top 117 colleges with the smallest gender gap in graduate earnings, according to an article from Forbes.
Rutgers—New Brunswick also ranked 14th for schools that showed a wage gap favoring men as the three schools to top the list — Clark University, Stevens University and Yale University — represented a percentage of female graduates who earned more than their male counterparts.
Rutgers–New Brunswick has approximately equal parts male to female undergraduates. All of the University's campuses combined hold approximately 46.4 percent men and 53.6 percent women, according to its site.
On average, male graduates from Rutgers make $48,500 yearly while female graduates receive $44,300 — an 8.7 percent difference, according to the article.
“Female graduates from top U.S. colleges earn only $48,000, compared to $59,000 for male ones. Put differently, females start their careers earning 19 percent less than males, an enormous difference, especially considering how early savings compound over time,” the article stated.
A report published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics yesterday cited that in 2017, women who were full-time wage and salary earners had median weekly earnings of $929 — 81.6 percent of the $1,138 median usual weekly earnings of their male counterparts, according to the report.
“Chief Regional Economist Martin Kohli noted that the 2017 women’s-to-men’s earnings ratio in New Jersey was little changed from the previous year,” the report stated.
The survey was conducted monthly by the U.S. Census Bureau and utilized one-fourth of 60,000 eligible households surveyed by the Bureau that represent all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The data is limited to wage and salary workers over the age of 16 and does not include people who describe as self-employed, according to the report.
“Earnings in this report do not control for many factors that can be significant in explaining earnings differences,” the report stated.
Nationwide women earned $770 per week or 81.8 percent of the $941 men earned.
Women in New Jersey have seen incremental increases in their earnings compared to men over the last decade. During 2004, the ratio of women’s to men’s earnings stood at approximately 74.3 percent, skip to 2010 and that figure swells to 84.8 percent.
The median wages experience a dip thereafter until 2014 and has shown a return to more than 80 percent since, according to the report.
The U.S. median average for women workers last year was $770.
This year New Jersey ranked among the highest paying states, $875 per week, and joined a concentration of East Coast states that contain some of the highest paying states in the country, according to the report.
