The State of Wage
Inequality in the Workplace

The wage gap is finally narrowing

For the last two years, the wage gap hadn’t budged. Our 2017 and 2018 reports found that on average, women were offered 4% less than men for the same job at the same company. But this year, we’re finally seeing progress: the wage gap narrowed to 3%. A similar positive trend has emerged in salary offers to men and women. Men were offered higher salaries 63% of the time for the previous two years, but that has since improved by dropping to 60%.

60% of the time men are offered higher salaries than a woman, for the same role at the same company

While these changes show improvement, our survey further reveals that of the 61% of women who discovered they were being paid less than men at the same role in their company, 16% found the difference was at least $20K.

Women are starting to ask for their worth

There have been countless attempts to uncover the root of wage inequality — from biased hiring processes to varying levels of educational attainment between men and women, it’s proved difficult to pinpoint a single cause. New data might have an answer.

“The usual suspects - namely experience, occupation, and location - play a minor role in explaining the pay gap. But the data points toward a bigger culprit: Expectations. Women are being offered less because they are asking for less. Once we account for a candidates’ asking salary, the wage gap essentially disappears,” said Nina Roussille of UC Berkeley’s Opportunity Lab, who is studying the tech industry’s wage inequality problem, and conducting independent research through Hired's marketplace data.

This year, we found women are asking for 4% less than men, a 2% improvement from 2018 — and the data suggests it’s in part because women are beginning to ask for their market worth. Transparency on wage data is integral to affecting this change. In our 2018 report we saw women asking for less than men 66% of the time, and that dropped to 61% this year.

Our survey shows that a comparable percentage of women and men are asking for increases from an initial salary offer as well — 69% of women and 71% of men. Unfortunately, a gap remains in how often men and women receive those raises: 7% more men than women reported successfully negotiating higher wages.

More women want jobs in tech — but companies are slow to catch on

More companies are championing diversity programs that encourage women to apply to technical positions — but women are still not getting interviews at the same rates as men.

When we look at how often female candidates are getting interviewed, companies are interviewing only men for an open position 41% of the time. Evaluating representation by role is revealing, too: while design and product management see women equally represented, women are still underrepresented in software engineering, data analytics, and DevOps.

An organization’s public efforts to resolve underrepresentation and wage inequality contributes to candidates’ perception of companies, too. Our survey suggests that the more transparent companies can be, the better: 69% would be more interested in working for a company that publicly releases their internal salary data.

Women aren’t taken seriously in the workforce

In addition to investigating our internal proprietary data, we surveyed more than 2,600 tech workers to surface women and men’s personal experiences with discrimination in the workplace: 72% of male respondents report they believe that a gender pay gap exists, along with an overwhelming 90% of female respondents.

Though the majority of both men and women believe there is a gap, they are personally affected differently. When asked if they have felt discriminated against in the workplace in the last five years because of their gender, 65% of women said yes, compared to just 11% of men. When asked how they most felt discriminated against, women pointed to the inability to be taken seriously by company leadership (40%), followed closely by unfair pay (38%). The majority of respondents (60%) noted finding out about being paid less through discussions with their colleagues about salary.

When women learn of a pay discrepancy, they’re taking action at a higher rate than men: 32% of women started looking for a new job, whereas men did so only 24% of the time.

Black and Hispanic women are still paid the least

In our third year examining how race impacts salary offers and salary expectations, we found a few key differences. Asian men reached the same pay grade as white men, even beating them out by a few hundred dollars with the highest average salary at 138K. Asian women are now the highest paid females, narrowly surpassing white women. When rounded to the nearest cent on the dollar, both white women and Asian women earn $0.97 for every dollar white and Asian men make, increasing from $0.96 and $0.95 respectively in 2018.

It is disheartening to see that black and Hispanic women are still offered the least, receiving average salary offers of $122K and $126K, respectively. Average salary offers for black men also slipped this year— they are offered a couple hundred dollars more than Hispanic women. In all racial categories, women asked for and were paid lower salaries than men. This aligns with our survey data, which found that one in five women felt discriminated against in the workplace due to their racial identity. We also found that many tech workers are becoming aware of the issue: 64% of female survey respondents believe a racial wage gap exists due to racial identity, while 54% of men believe it exists.

San Francisco has the smallest gap, Boston has work to do

With more Bay Area companies highlighting their equal pay policies and many US states including California recently signing the salary privacy bill, wage parity progress has been made in Silicon Valley, but still falls short. Our data shows that women working in San Francisco are offered on average 6% less than men in similar roles, which is the smallest wage gap compared to other major US tech hubs. For comparison, Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York improved their gaps (now at 8%), whereas Boston didn’t budge (still at 9%).

It is important to note that these wage gaps are higher than the 3% average wage gap reported in the first section of this report. Our US local market data looks at the gap between the average man and the average woman in that market, while the 3% wage gap is based on salary offers for the same role at the same company.

Women’s representation in the candidate pool is lacking in every city. The percentage of underrepresentation also significantly increased for all cities compared to last year’s data.

Older women experience the worst wage gap

When examining age data as it relates to the gender wage gap, inequality worsens with age. Women between 20 and 30 earn $0.97 for every dollar men earn in similar roles, but that gap increases to $0.93 for women between 41 and 45. One hopeful finding is that the wage gap shrank for nearly all age groups compared to last year.

In addition to age data, we also looked at years of experience and discovered that women with less than two years experience, as well as between three and four years experience, earn $0.98 to the dollar. The wage gap shrunk in nearly every experience category compared to last year’s earned and preferred salary data, except for women with 15+ years of experience.

Women in product management roles are making more off the bat

In 2018, our State of Wage Inequality report found that data analytics, design and software engineering roles were all offering women 8% less than men. Last year the wage gap was narrowest for product management salaries at 4%.

In 2019, our data shows that when it comes to starting salaries (0 - 2 years) women in product management roles are actually making more money than men in the same role by 5%. Additionally, the gap between men and women in starting data analytics and software engineering roles has narrowed, with men being paid 1% more in these positions. Despite these developments, some of the other technical roles have a long way to go. The wage gap is much larger for talent starting their careers in design and DevOps (7% and 12% respectively).

LGBTQ+ men and women earn less than their non-LGBTQ+ counterparts

This year’s data revealed that LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) men are still being shortchanged in tech. Similar to last year, LGBTQ+ men are continuing to earn less than their non-LGBTQ+ counterparts by 4% on average.

When it comes to LGBTQ+ women in tech, we did see a change from last year -- though disappointing. Last year we noted that for the first time on our platform, LGBTQ+ women were getting offered slightly more than non-LGBTQ+ women at a rate of 1%. This year, the results have changed slightly, revealing that on average, LGBTQ+ women are being paid less than non-LGBTQ+ women in the same role by 2%.

It is important to note that the data in this section reflects a smaller sample size, as fewer people choose to self-identify in their profile.