Life

LGBTQ+ staff in America earn 90 cents for every $1 ‘typical workers’ make

By Conor Clark

26th January 2022

LGBTQ+ workers in the United States earn 90 cents for every dollar that a typical worker earns, new analysis has revealed.

This figure rose to 97 cents per dollar for LGBTQ+ White workers, stayed at 90 cents for Latinx community members but fell even lower to 80 and 70 cents for Black and Native American LGBTQ+ employees, respectively.

Asian and Asian Pacific Islanders who are LGBTQ+ earn $1 for every dollar earned by the typical worker in the country.

The disparity continues when looking at members of the community by their gender identity.

Men earn 96 cents to every dollar a typical worker earns, with this figure dropping to 87 cents for women.

Non-binary, genderqueer, gender-fluid and two-spirit workers earn just 70 cents to each dollar, a figure that stays the same for trans men and drops to just 60 cents for trans women.

Until this point, there has been no data on the pay gap experienced by LGBTQ+ people in America – despite prior reports on the economic hardships the community often face.

The report’s ‘typical worker’ terminology refers to the median wage for all workers in the United States.

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation used data from rspondents to the ‘2021 LGBTQ Community Survey’ in May and June 2021.

Of the more than 23,000 respondents, an analysis of 6,815 United States-based employees was conducted as these were non-farmworker, full-time (35 or more hours per week) staff members in the public or private sector.

This means that pay disparities could be even more severe than this analysis concluded, as it is focused on full-time staff.

You can find the full analysis by clicking here.