Gender gap widest with high-paying jobs
(MoneyWatch) Girls, if you want to earn the same pay as your male co-workers, get a low-paying job.
Female stock clerks and "order fillers" earn more than their male counterparts. But the pay for both men and women stinks, averaging $25,584 annually. But as soon as you aspire to an executive-level position, you'll be staring at a widening wage gap, according to a study by NerdScholar that pulled the best and worst jobs for pay equity out of data provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Overall, the 10 jobs with the worst pay equity had an average annual salary of $71,976. The 10 jobs with the most equal pay, on the other hand, paid an average of $43,293.
Property and community management jobs were the nation's worst for pay equity, generating salaries of $62,452 for men but just $37,856 for women. Personal finance advisors ranked as the second-worst position for pay equity, with men earning $79,820 and women making $48,932.
The highest-paid job with the worst pay parity was also the top position at a company: CEO. Male chief executives earned an average of $110,344, while female CEOs earned just $76,128. However, pay equity was also miserable among loan officers, insurance agents, financial managers and education administrators. In all of these professions, men earned at least 30 percent more than their female counterparts.
The highest-paid job with good pay parity was for operations research analysts, where women earned an average of 5 percent more than men -- $68,952 versus $65,416. Female respiratory therapists also earn more than their male counterparts, taking home an average of $53,456, compared with the average wage of $50,232 for a man.
However, five of the 10 jobs with the smallest gender wage gaps paid less than $35,000 a year. Packers, receptionists, information clerks, computer support specialists, medical scientists, bookkeepers and police officers earned largely the same wages whether they were men or women. By and large, these jobs required less education and less skill, according to NerdScholar's research.
