Today is Equal Pay Day, marking how many days into the current year women must work in order to match men’s earnings from the previous year. Although this date falls 16 days earlier than the first time this milestone was marked in 1996, Equal Pay Day is one day later than it was in 2025 and two weeks later than it was in 2024. In other words, the earnings gap– after years of gradual improvement– is widening again. How does metro Atlanta compare with the nation as a whole? And how does the pay gap compare across occupations?
To explore these questions, we utilize data from the 2024 1-year release of the American Community Survey. Table S2412 compares median earnings by sex by occupation for full-time, year-round civilian employed population 16 years and over. Figure 1 presents compares the pay gap by occupation for the Atlanta MSA and the nation as a whole. For the purposes of this graph, we concentrate on the top-level occupation categories.
Figure 1: Median Earnings by Sex by Occupation for the Atlanta MSA and Nation
This graph shows that the pay gap is slightly wider in the Atlanta MSA than it is nationally: women earn 82.1 cents for every dollar earned by men in Atlanta, while women nationwide earn 83.0 cents on the dollar. But Atlanta female workers in natural resources, construction and maintenance occupations fare quite a bit better than their counterparts elsewhere in the county (82.4 cents in Atlanta vs. 74.1 cents nationwide).
Pay differentials by sex are closely tied to broader issues of income inequality, which in turn influence economic mobility. We will discuss economic mobility in greater depth in future blog posts over the course of this year.
Click here to access the data utilized in this graph (and have a peek at the more granular occupation categories) directly from the U.S. Census Bureau.