Women and people of color continue to earn less than their white, male counterparts in tech jobs across the board, recruiting platform Hired’s 2021 wage inequality report showed. Despite some slow progress, the wage discrepancy persists across gender, race, age, sexuality, and education.
Though progress has been made across the industry, there’s still a long way to go.
“We continue to see that groups who are paid less also expect lower salaries than their white, male counterparts — even if they have the same experience,” Josh Brenner, the CEO of Hired, said. “These individuals can be stuck in a cycle of lower pay if they have no way of truly knowing how much they deserve in compensation for their role. Our data shows that simply offering everyone visibility into what a fair wage truly is would make a meaningful impact towards narrowing the gap.”
The fifth annual Hired report compiles data from more than 226,000 interview requests and job offers through its platform from 10,000 companies and 245,000 job seekers.
While the wage gap is slowly narrowing, discrepancies remain. Men were offered higher salaries than women for an equal role at the same company 59% of the time in 2020, according to the report. That’s down from 65% in 2019 and compares with 63% in the platform’s first-ever report in 2017.
In 2020, companies offered women an average of 2.5% less than their male counterparts for the same roles. That’s up from 4.4% less in 2019.
There are a number of factors including location that may contribute to the persistent wage gap, the Hired report found. In London, for example, the gender pay gap stands at 10%. That compares with 5% in San Francisco.