Say It Ain't So
Dallas is a better city for women than Houston? When it comes to the wage gap, the stats are cruelly clear
Finance site NerdWallet recently dove into the gender wage gap across the United States, and Texas ought to be proud: It is home to one of only 22 U.S. cities where women out-earn men. According to NerdWallet’s research, women in Dallas now earn 100.5 percent of what men do.
Between 2005 and 2013, the pay gap in Dallas changed by 172 percent. That change was the second most significant in the country. Top honors goes to Oakland, California, where the gap changed a whopping 1,076 percent. Females there now earn 108.8 percent of what their male counterparts do.
Compare that to the national stats. According to NerdWallet, women make about 79 percent of what men do — although the current wage gap is an improvement from 2005, when the median annual income for women who worked full time was 76.6 percent of a man’s.
For its analysis, NerdWallet used data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey in 2005 and 2013 to rank nearly 500 cities in three unique ways:
- Using data on the median income of full-time, year-round male and female workers, they found the rate of change for each city’s wage gap from 2005 to 2013 and ranked them to find where the wage gap was closing the fastest.
- They used the same 2013 income data to calculate women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s. After ranking the cities, they found 22 places where women’s wages were more than 100 percent of men’s.
- Using the income data, they found the percentage change in women’s wages from 2005 to 2013 and ranked the cities to see where women had the largest gains. The data included the percentage change in men’s income over the same time.
Rounding out the top five cities where the gender pay gap closed fastest are three places in Florida: Miramar (No. 3), Orlando (No. 4) and Hollywood (No. 5). The top five cities where women out-earn men are Inglewood, California; Trenton, New Jersey; Orlando, Florida; Albany, New York; and Carson, California.
Midland and McAllen are the only other Texas cities mentioned in the survey. They rank Nos. 8 and 20, respectively, on the list of cities where women’s wages increased the most since 2005.
