The gender pay gap is getting wider, reversing progress
What to watch: There are signs that the labor market for women is worse this year — particularly for Black women who are seeing a spike in unemployment, in the wake of federal layoffs and the DEI crackdown.
- Hundreds of thousands of mothers also left the workforce in the first half of the year.
- “At a time when women, including many mothers, are leaving the labor force at record rates, it is a five-alarm fire to see that the gender wage gap is widening for an unprecedented second year in a row,” said Emily Martin, chief program officer at the liberal National Women’s Law Center.