WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement today after the Census Bureau released new data on income, poverty and health insurance coverage in the United States.
“The report from the Census Bureau is clear. While the very wealthiest people in our country get much richer, the middle class remains in a 40-year decline and more people today are living in poverty than ever before. This is an issue that cannot be ignored. We need to create millions of decent-paying jobs, raise the minimum wage and protect the most vulnerable people in our society – the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor.”
The average woman working full time, year round in 2014 made just 79 percent of what a similar man made, according to the latest data from the Census Bureau. Think Progress reported. That’s not statistically different than last year’s 78 percent figure, and there hasn’t been a significant reduction of the wage gap since 2007.
Men earned $50,400 at the median in 2014, while women earned $39,600. both not stat from 2013. Neither gender has seen a significant increase in their median earnings since 2009, and women’s 2014 median earnings were not statistically different than what they made in 2007.
The gender wage gap is even larger for women of color as compared to what white men make.
The wage gap steadily closed at a relatively rapid pace between the 1960s and 1990s, improving from a 60 percent gap to a 71 percent gap. But since 2000, progress has all but flatlined. A big underlying factor is the slowdown in women’s wage growth. That’s what helped propel the closure of the gap in earlier decades, but women have seen a standstill in wage growth since about 2001, as has most of the country.
