What would your salary be if you were a white guy?

By Michelle Klug

It’s national Equal Pay Day in the U.S., and we’re rolling out this gender and race pay calculator. The point is to highlight the pay gap that exists between men and women in the workforce, and the gap between different races of Americans. Currently, women overall make 79 cents for every dollar men make. If you’re a black or Latina woman, the gap is even larger. Not cool.

So a little about our pay calculator: It’s overly simplified. Here’s why:

1. We’re using research from the U.S. government and Pew Research Center, which only breaks the workforce down into white, black, Asian and Latina. We realize not all people fit into these buckets, but this is the data available. 😞 We wish we didn’t have to ask you to put yourself in a category at all, but we also wish your pay wasn’t determined at least partially by arbitrary categories.
2. We know other factors affect the pay gap besides just gender and race (industry, location, career preference patterns, etc.), but getting too into the weeds would take away from what we wanted to convey: That overall a pay gap exists, and it’s significant.
3. White men are often used as the baseline group for research studies, including the two we cite here, because they make up the largest demographic in the workforce. Asian men actually make more on average than anybody, but they’re a smaller fraction of American workers, just 2.7%. We’re not trying to hate on the groups that make the most $$. We’re just providing this tool so people can understand the inequality that exists and think about it for a minute … or for longer.

More facts on pay inequality:

–White men earn more than all groups of women, and Black and Latino men.

–The largest gap is between Latina women and white men. Latina women earn 55 cents for every dollar a white man makes.

–Women make up 48% of the private-sector workforce, but women are only 4% of CEOs at S&P 500 companies.

–Women with graduate degrees on average earn $5,000 less per year than men with bachelor degrees.

And finally, the government estimates men and women might be paid equally, but not until 2059. Only 42 years to go, ladies.

Check out your white guy salary here: ajplus.co/EqualPay