Forbes – “Data just released by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission exposes a clear gender pay gap, with men outearning women, especially in the highest-paid jobs. The gap is widest for women of color. This week, the EEOC released aggregated pay data collected from businesses in 2017 and 2018. To make this information accessible to everyone, the organization also launched a new interactive tool that lets people find wage information by gender, location, race, and job type. It’s the first time that the EEOC has released pay data. The gender disparity is most egregious at the top of the pay scale, where men constitute a whopping three-quarters of individuals earning over $208,000. Even within the second highest pay bracket, with salaries between $163,000 and $207,000, a striking 71% of the earners are men. Conversely, women are the majority on the lower end, making up 59% of those with incomes below $19,000. The data also highlight how women of color are particularly disadvantaged. In 2018, across every racial group, women earned less on average than their male counterparts. Black women and American Indian or Alaska Native women had the lowest median earnings, ranging from $19,200 to $24,400. In 2018, the median salary range for men was a full pay band above that for women, with men’s average earnings falling between $39,000 and $49,900 versus $30,600 to $38,900 for women. (The data was reported by the companies to the EEOC in pay ranges or bands, so the summary data is also presented in ranges). The EEOC collected the pay data in 2017 and 2018 from private employers and certain federal contractors with 100 or more employees. They aggregated the data representing over 100 million workers and 70,000 employers.”