President Obama and many of his fellow Democrat politicians think they have identified a terrible injustice in the “gender pay gap.” But with almost no effort, anyone who can access the Internet can go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website and find information showing a far greater injustice: the pay gap between young people and older workers.
Obama and company are scandalized that women are paid 77 percent of what men are paid. Yet I have heard them say nothing about BLS numbers showing 16- to 24-year olds are paid only 54 percent of what workers 25 and older are paid.
Sex discrimination in the workplace? Apparently it’s nothing compared to age discrimination in the workplace!
The BLS informs us: “Median weekly earnings were highest for women age 35 to 64 in 2012, with little difference in the earnings of 35- to 44-year-olds ($747), 45- to 54-year-olds ($746), and 55- to 64-year-olds ($766).” Women 16 to 24 years old were paid only $416 a week, according to the BLS.
“Among men,” the BLS tells us, “workers who were age 45 to 64 had the highest earnings, with 45- to 54-year-olds ($994) making about the same as 55- to 64-year-olds ($1,005).” Men 16 to 24 years old were paid only $468 a week, according to the BLS.
Outrageous! And the more we delve into the BLS report, the more discrimination we find! For instance:
“Asian women and men earned more than their White, Black, and Hispanic or Latino counterparts in 2012. Among women, Whites ($710) earned 92 percent as much as Asians ($770), while Blacks ($599) and Hispanics ($521) earned 78 percent and 68 percent as much as Asians, respectively. In comparison, White men ($879) earned 83 percent as much as Asian men ($1,055); Black men ($665) earned 63 percent as much as Asians; and Hispanic men ($592), 56 percent.”
It’s clear as crystal: Employers discriminate against Whites, Blacks and Hispanics of both sexes while favoring Asians of both sexes!
Oh, no. We read a little farther and find this: “Earnings growth has been largest for White women, outpacing that of their Black and Hispanic counterparts. Between 1979 and 2012, inflation-adjusted earnings (also called constant-dollar earnings) rose by 31 percent for White women, compared with an increase of 20 percent for Black women and 13 percent for Hispanic women. In contrast, earnings for White and Black men in 2012 showed little or no change from their 1979 constant-dollar levels, while Hispanic men’s earnings were down by 8 percent after adjusting for inflation. . . . Asians were not included in this analysis because comparable data for the group are not available until 2003.”
So, since 1979, in constant-dollar terms, employers have been discriminating against men, holding down their earnings while giving White, Black and Hispanic women double-digit increases in their earnings!
Oh, and it gets worse!
“At each level of education, women have fared better than men with respect to earnings growth. Although both women and men without a high school diploma have experienced declines in inflation-adjusted earnings since 1979, the drop for women was significantly less than that for men: a 14-percent decrease for women as opposed to a 32-percent decline for men. On an inflation-adjusted basis, earnings for women with a college degree have increased by 28 percent since 1979, while those of male college graduates have risen by 17 percent.”
So employers have gone more than 30 years discriminating against men regardless of education!
I can’t stand to read any further. Paragraph after paragraph of discrimination laid out for us by the government’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics! Read it all yourself, if you have the stomach for it.
President Obama has not been shy about wielding that famous pen of his to right all sorts of workplace wrongs. Recently he has decreed a minimum wage of $10.10 an hour for federal government contractors. On Tuesday he signed an Executive Order prohibiting federal contractors from retaliating against employees who discuss their compensation. And he signed a Presidential Memorandum “instructing the Secretary of Labor to establish new regulations requiring federal contractors to submit to the Department of Labor summary data on compensation paid to their employees, including data by sex and race,” according to a White House press release. “The Department of Labor will use the data to encourage compliance with equal pay laws and to target enforcement more effectively by focusing efforts where there are discrepancies and reducing burdens on other employers.”
Equal pay laws? After reading the BLS report, it appears there is no such thing as equal pay. Discrimination is the only possible explanation for all these numbers! The mystery to me is why President Obama and other Democrat leaders have so narrowly focused their attention on the gender pay gap when the BLS has highlighted so many other egregious workplace injustices that scream to be righted.
