Today, March 25th, marks Equal Pay Day— the day into the current year (plus the entirety of the previous year) to which women must work in order to earn the same that men did in just the previous year alone. The threshold comes 13 days later in 2025 than it did in 2024, which indicates that the earnings gap between men and women has increased from 2024 to 2025.
How does change in Metro Atlanta compare to the nationwide trend? And does education help decrease that wage gap? To answer these questions, we turn to 1-year estimates from the American Community Survey, which the Census Bureau has produced annually since 2005.[1]
Figure 1 below compares the ratio of median earnings for female and males (full-time, year-round employees) for the Atlanta MSA to that of the nation as a whole over time. These ratios show us how many cents women earn for each dollar earned by men.
Figure 1: Earnings Gap for 12-Month, Full-Time Employees in Metro Atlanta and the United States, 2005-2023
As this figure above shows, women in Metro Atlanta fared better than women nationwide for most of the period during which ACS data are available. Women’s earnings in Metro Atlanta showed a trend of slow progress toward equality, improving from 78.8 cents on the dollar in 2005 to a peak of 83.7 cents on the dollar in 2019. But the general trend of improvement reversed with the pandemic, and women in Atlanta now make only 81.9 cents on the dollar when compared to Atlanta men.
Women nationwide had seen steady improvement most years since 2005, increasing from 76.7 cents on the dollar in 2005 to 82.2 cents in 2023. But that movement toward equality backslid somewhat in 2024 to 81.9 cents.
What role can education play in narrowing the earnings gap? Figure 2 below compares median earnings for women to median earnings for men in Metro Atlanta –by level of educational attainment– for 2023.[2]
Figure 2: Median Earnings by Sex by Educational Attainment in Metro Atlanta, 2023
This graph above (Figure 2) demonstrates two things. First, it makes the obvious point that education does matter: both men and women have greater median earnings as they ascend to higher levels of educational attainment. But it also reveals that men outearn women at every educational level– and if anything, the earnings gap increases as you go up the ladder. The wage gap is about $10k among high school graduates, but grows to $27k among 4-year college graduates and almost $37k among those with graduate or professional degrees. Moreover, the median earnings for women with graduate or professional are actually lower than those for men with just a bachelor’s degree.
Another way of looking at these differences is to revisit earnings ratios, as presented in the first graph of this post. Figure 3 below shows the earnings gap (wage ratio female: male) in Metro Atlanta –by level of educational attainment– for 2023:
Figure 3: Earnings Gap in Metro Atlanta by Level of Educational Attainment, 2023
As Figure 3 above conveys, the earnings gap is highest among workers with less than a high school education. Earnings are most equal among high school graduates and workers with some college– but even then, the median female earns less than 76 cents on the dollar compared to the median male. And the wage gap again widens among those with 4-year degrees and higher education.
So in sum, while we see that education does increase earnings, it’s evident that women see less return on that educational investment than do their male counterparts.
Notes
[1] As noted in previous posts, 1-year estimates are not available for 2020, as the Census Bureau suspended survey operations for most of the year in response to COVID-19.
[2] Unfortunately, the Census table providing the data for this part of the analysis does not allow us to focus exclusively on full-time, year-round employees as we did in Figure 1. As such, part of the gap we observe is attributable to the fact that women are more likely than men to work part time or take time off from work in order to care for their families.
Access the data used in Figure 1 here.
Access the data used in Figures 2 and 3 here.
Photo: Getty Images