The Gender Pay Gap Stalls in 2025 - Payscale's Research Shows

• Despite pay transparency laws, wage equity progress continues to stall nationwide, with systemic barriers still limiting women's earning potential.
• The “childbearing penalty” remains highly evident, as women with children continue to earn just 75 cents for every dollar fathers make, while fathers make 2% more than childless men.
• While the gender pay gap showed gradual improvement from 2018 to 2022, progress has remained stagnant since the Great Resignation, with declines especially evident among older women.
  

SEATTLE, March 24, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Payscale Inc., the leading provider of compensation data, software and services, released its 2025 Gender Pay Gap Report (GPGR), revealing that despite pay transparency laws, the closing of the gender pay gap has stalled nationwide, with systemic barriers still limiting women’s earning potential.

Payscale’s analysis found that in 2025 women still earn just 83 cents for every dollar men make. While this is unchanged from last year, according to AAUW, Equal Pay Day shifted back more than two weeks this year, meaning that women must work that much longer to achieve the same earnings as men in 2025, compared to 2024. The controlled gender pay gap also remains the same as last year, at 99 cents. The controlled gender pay gap is the amount that women earn for every dollar that a man earns when accounting for job title and compensable factors, while the uncontrolled gender pay gap is the difference in median pay for men and women overall.

“Even though our 2025 Compensation Best Practices Report showed a minor decrease in support for pay equity (57%), and there has been a recent weakening of public support around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) of late, some states have shown promising progress towards closing the gender pay gap,” said Ruth Thomas, pay equity strategist at Payscale. “While not every state has enacted pay transparency laws, which are shown to support pay equity efforts, many organizations are still staunchly committed to the cause. In fact, compared to 2020, there has been a 19% increase in corporate commitment to these efforts.”

Key takeaways from GPGR:

Working Parents — Motherhood continues to hurt pay equity, while fathers get a raise as a result of the childbearing penalty.

• Women with children face a significantly wider gender pay gap, earning just 75 cents for every dollar fathers make—unchanged from last year.
• This gap is even wider for women of color, with American Indian and Alaska Native mothers experiencing the largest disparity, earning just 64 cents for every dollar fathers earn.
• When controlling for job roles and experience, mothers earn 98 cents for every dollar earned by fathers with similar characteristics, a figure that has remained steady.
• Meanwhile, fatherhood financially benefits men, who earn 2% more than childless men, while mothers face stagnant or reduced pay compared to childless women.

Job Seeking — Women seeking new jobs are closing the pay gap, but parenting responsibilities and workplace flexibility keep many stuck with lower wages.

• The gender pay gap is narrower for women actively seeking a new job in the next six months compared to those not looking, suggesting that a willingness to leave positions may lead to higher pay.
• Yet, this uncontrolled gender pay gap slightly widened this year to $0.83 from $0.84 last year, indicating slower progress overall.
• Women who stay in their current job may do so due to benefits they can't afford to lose, such as flexible work schedules, which can result in tolerating lower pay.
• Workplace culture, flexibility, and work-life balance may be more important to women than men when deciding whether to stay with an employer, potentially influencing their pay trajectory.

Higher Education — Despite earning advanced degrees like MBAs, law degrees, and health professional doctorates, women still face a significant pay gap, highlighting that education alone doesn’t guarantee pay equity.

• Women with MBAs face the largest uncontrolled pay gap, earning just 77 cents for every dollar earned by men with the same degree.
• Health professional doctorates have the smallest uncontrolled pay gap at 89 cents, while women with law degrees earn 87 cents for every dollar men with the same degree make, marking a slight decrease from last year.

Leadership and Career Progress — Not only do women earn less as their career progresses, they’re also less likely to reach leadership roles.

• White men are the most likely to hold leadership positions, with 45% serving as managers or in higher roles. Women are underrepresented in leadership roles, with only 5% of white women becoming executives compared to 7% of white men. The numbers are even lower for women of color: 3% for Hispanic women, 4% for Black or African American women, and 3% for Asian women.
• Women who do ascend the corporate ladder earn less than their male counterparts, with the gap widening at higher levels. Women at the executive level earn 93 cents for every dollar men make, even when controlling for job characteristics, and just 72 cents when not controlling for these factors.
• The gender pay gap is widest for Hispanic women and American Indian and Native Alaskan women at the executive level when data are controlled, currently standing at 91 cents, which is two points narrower than 2024.
  

Gender Norms — While STEM industries show progress toward pay equity, traditional gender norms continue to widen the gap in other sectors.

• The biggest pay gaps appear in occupations with deep-rooted gender norms, including Legal (63 cents), Farming & Fishing (77 cents), and Management (79 cents), where men dominate top-paying positions.
• The gender pay gap is also widest in Finance & Insurance (78 cents) and Agencies & Consultancies (84 cents) industries, despite women making up 53% and 59% of the workforce in these industries, respectively.
• Even in female-dominated industries like Healthcare (89 cents), Education (91 cents), and Nonprofits (88 cents), pay disparities persist.
• Some STEM-heavy industries show pay equity when controlled, but women remain underrepresented in higher-paying roles within these industries.

Location - States with and without salary transparency laws have seen improvements in the controlled gender pay gap, likely due in part to increased awareness from transparency efforts in other regions or companies adopting national pay transparency practices.

• In 2025, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, Vermont and Massachusetts will enact pay transparency legislation.
• The controlled pay gap remained closed in 2025 for California, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Washington, D.C. - all showed closed pay gaps last year, and, except for New Jersey and Oregon, have active pay transparency laws.
• While other states continue to show improvement, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, New Mexico, Vermont, and Washington state have seen their gaps widen.
• New gains are emerging in Alabama, Delaware, Nebraska, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and West Virginia, where the controlled pay gap has recently closed.

“It’s disappointing to still see a lack of progress towards closing the gender pay gap. Beyond being the right thing to do, ensuring fair pay without discrimination is required by law. This fact alone should support closing the gender pay gap. Even more, it’s a critical retention tool for businesses, which is why, unsurprisingly, women employees frequently leave organizations because they don’t think they are being paid fairly,” said Lulu Seikaly, senior corporate employment attorney at Payscale. “Pay transparency has an important role to play here, because when an employee has an understanding of their compensation trajectory it increases trust and loyalty. Our 2025 Compensation Best Practices Report revealed that over half (56%) of companies are sharing pay ranges in their job postings regardless of whether or not it's required by law — a promising nod to the future of fair pay.”

According to Payscale’s 2025 Compensation Best Practices Report, 72% of HR and compensation professionals believe that gender pay gap research is meaningful. Paired with Payscale’s compensation management software and services enable organizations to easily evaluate their current compensation strategies and standardize their internal pay practices to increase transparency and ensure fair pay.

The 2025 Gender Pay Gap Report analyzes crowdsourced data from over 369,000 people in the U.S. who took Payscale’s free online salary survey between January 2024 and January 2025. The full report and its methodology, including analysis by race, job level, age, education, industry, occupation, and location, can be accessed in its entirety at Payscale.com/research-and-insights/gender-pay-gap.

About Payscale
As the industry leader in compensation management, Payscale is on a mission to help job seekers, employees, and businesses make sustainable fair pay a reality. Empowering 65% of the Fortune 500, Payscale provides a combination of diverse and dynamic data sources, experienced compensation services, and scalable software to enable organizations such as Panasonic, ZoomInfo, Chipotle, AccentCare, University of Washington, American Airlines, and PetSmart to make fair and appropriate pay decisions.

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